Self-Serving Bias

You believe your failures are due to external factors, yet you're responsible for your successes.

Many of us enjoy unearned privileges, luck and advantages that others do not. It’s easy to tell ourselves that we deserve these things, whilst blaming circumstance when things don’t go our way. Our desire to protect and exalt our own egos is a powerful force in our psychology. Fostering humility can help countermand this tendency, whilst also making us nicer humans.

When judging others, be mindful of how this bias interacts with the just-world hypothesis, fundamental attribution error, and the in-group bias.