The Essay About Social Psychology

An online study with 160 participants, equally represented by Malaysian and Australian university students, sought to compare the self-serving bias in accomplishment across two cultures, Malaysian and Australian. The study evaluated two hypotheses: (1) Malaysians and Australians would have self-serving bias in terms of accomplishment; and (2) Australians would have higher levels of self-serving bias than Malaysians. Respondents completed the Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale (MMCS) and clicked the submit button to submit their responses and consent. The findings demonstrate that individuals from both nations attribute their success to their abilities more than their failure. Among several factors, only the factor of ability shows evidence of self-serving bias in the attribution of achievement.

Keywords: self-serving bias, cultural differences

Introduction

Attributing success to internal factors and failure to external factor is referred to as self-serving attribution bias. This concept is widely studied in the field of social psychology and cuts across various topics and populations. There are variations across cultures of how they attribute success and failure. Studies often present two contrasting cultures to demonstrate such differences. Ng et al. (__) focused on New Zealand and Singapore students. Bochner (1994) evaluated responses from Malaysians and Australian/British respondents while Aldridge and Islam (2012) looked at success attributions of Japanese and Australian athletes.

This concept of contrasting cultures is further developed by Hofstede’s research in 1980. Bochner (1994) explains that Hofstede’s study, which involved respondents representing 53 counties all over the world, generated four major categories also knowns as dimensions. Hofstede’s Model has four dimensions, specifically power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism/collectivism, and masculinity/femininity. In Hofstede’s model individualism is present in societies where there is a clear distinguishable line separating an individual from society. Such relationship is manifested in Western societies, examples of which are countries like Australia, the US, UK and other European societies. Collectivism, on the other hand, refers to societies wherein individuals regard themselves as “extensions to various social systems to which they belong” (Bochner 1994, p.274). Unlike individualists, persons from collective cultures regard themselves aa part of the society and are closely connected with other members of society especially those they consider significant. Countries like Japan, China, Brazil, and Malaysia have collectivist cultures. Members of collectivist cultures most often would ”attribute their own and others’ behavior to situational rather than dispositional causes” (Jaspers and Hewstone 1982, cited by Bochner 1994, p.74).

Aims of the study

This study aims to compare the self-serving bias of Malaysians with Australians in relation to achievement. The researchers pose the following hypotheses:

Malaysians and Australians would have self-serving bias in relation to achievement; and

Australians would have higher levels of self-serving bias than Malaysians.

Method

Participants

A total of 160 university students participated in the study. Of this number, 80 were Malaysians and 80 were Australians. For each group 50% were males and 50% were females. The students’ ages ranged from 18 to 25 years old with Malaysian students having mean ageof21.90 and Australian students with a mean age of 20.41. All participants were recruited through a paid Facebook advertisement in English.

Materials

The researchers made use of the Multidimensional-Multiattributional Causality Scale (MMCS; Lefcourt, von Baeyer, Ware, & Cox, 1979) to generate information about the participants’ beliefs about their academic success and failures. The MMCS contains different scenarios that ask about the respondents perceptions about the source of success or failure. The first part of the questionnaire require the participant’s nationality, age and gender. They were made to answer the four Achievement subscales of the MMCS.

Procedure

The research team prepared a webpage for the study. Here, the purpose of the study and other related information were presented. They clearly indicated that the study investigates the beliefs of university students about their success and failures in their academic life. The next step was creating advertisements that were posted online through Facebook. These paid ads specifically targeted university students aged 18-25 who are from Malaysia and Australia. Potential participants who showed interest by clicking on the ad were then transferred to the study’s webpage. In this site, they were asked to read the study participant information statement. They were likewise informed that their participation would be voluntary. Their personal data will be treated in a confidential manner as they will remain anonymous.

Informed consent was sought from each of the participants. In the website they were given a substantial amount of information to guide their decision to join or decline the invitation. They were told that clicking on the ”submit button” would mean that they have given the site their permission to use the data they have entered into the questionnaire.

The questionnaire was administered online. It uses a self-reporting procedure since participants read the questions and answered these on their own without prompts from researchers. The data from each of the participants were stored in a secure server at Deakin University. The only ones with access to the collected data were the members of the research team. When the require number of questionnaires were collected, the researcher team proceeded to code and process the collected information.

Results

Presented in Table 1 are the mean scores of the participants’ attributions of their achievement success and achievement failure. As regards self-serving bias, results show that participants from both countries attributed to their ability their success more than their failures (F (1,78) = 200.02, p < 0001). The factors of effort, context, and do not present much variation in the scores unlike the factor of ability. Thus, only the factor of ability shows evidence of self-serving bias in the attribution of achievement.

Table 1

Mean scores for participants’ attribution of success and failure

Success

Failure

Australians

Malaysians

Australians

Malaysians

Ability

11.90

11.00

8.00

7.70

Effort

12.10

11.20

11.28

11.27

Context

8.07

7.70

7.81

7.68

Luck

7.20

7.00

7.93

7.53

When results were assessed based on country, whether from Malaysia or Australia, significant differences in attribution between students from Australia and those from Malaysia (F (1,78) = 4.36, p < .01) and effort (F (1,78) = 4.50, p < .01) were noted. These differences, however, are only found only in the factors of ability and effort, and were also limited for success alone. Compared to their Malaysian counterparts, the students coming from Australia attribute more their achievement success to their ability and effort. This result validates the second hypothesis of this study. However, this is only in the ability and effort.

Discussion

References

Aldridge, L. J. and Islam, M. R. (2012), Cultural differences in athlete attributions for success and failure: The sports pages revisited. International Journal of Psychology, 47: 67–75. doi:10.1080/00207594.2011.585160.

Swinton, A. D., Kurtz-Costes, B., Rowley, S. J., & Okeke-Adeyanju, N. (2011). A Longitudinal Examination of African American Adolescents’ Attributions about Achievement Outcomes. Child Development, 82(5), 1486–1500. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01623.x

Appendix

Title: Cultural differences in athlete attributions for success and failure: The sports pages revisited

Abstract

Self-serving biases in attribution, while found with relative consistency in research with Western samples, have rarely been found in Japanese samples typically recruited for research. However, research conducted with Japanese participants to date has tended to use forced-choice and/or reactive paradigms, with school or university students, focusing mainly on academic performance or arbitrary and/or researcher-selected tasks. This archival study explored whether self-serving attributional biases would be shown in the real-life attributions for sporting performance made by elite Olympic athletes from Japan and Australia. Attributions (N = 216) were extracted from the sports pages of Japanese and Australian newspapers and rated by Australian judges for locus and controllability. It was hypothesized that Australian, but not Japanese, athletes would show self-serving biases such that they attributed wins to causes more internal and controllable than the causes to which they attributed losses. Contrary to predictions, self-serving biases were shown to at least some extent by athletes of both nationalities. Both Australian and Japanese men attributed wins to causes more internal than those to which they attributed losses. Women, however, attributed wins and losses to causes that did not differ significantly in terms of locus. All athletes tended to attribute wins to causes that were more controllable than the causes to which losses were attributed. Results are inconsistent with a large body of research suggesting that Japanese do not show self-serving biases in attribution, and are discussed in the light of differences in methodology, context, and participants that may have contributed to these effects.

Title: A Longitudinal Examination of African American Adolescents’ Attributions about Achievement Outcomes

Abstract

Developmental, gender, and academic domain differences in causal attributions and the influence of attributions on classroom engagement were explored longitudinally in 115 African American adolescents. In Grades 8 and 11, adolescents reported attributions for success and failure in math, English and writing, and science. In Grade 11, English and mathematics teachers rated students’ classroom engagement. Boys were more likely than girls to attribute math successes to high ability and to attribute English failures to low ability. Both genders’ ability attributions for math became more negative from eighth to eleventh grade. Grade 8 attributions of math failure to lack of ability were negatively related to Grade 11 math classroom engagement. Results illustrate the gendered nature of motivational beliefs among Black youth.