Self-Serving Bias
Self-Serving Attribution Bias
The tendency to credit personal successes to one's own abilities and efforts while blaming failures on external circumstances — a pattern that protects and enhances self-esteem.
Origin
Fritz Heider laid the groundwork in the 1950s with his attribution theory, observing that people in ambiguous situations make judgments that protect their self-image. Psychologists Dale Miller and Michael Ross formalized the concept in their influential 1975 paper "Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact or Fiction?" in the Psychological Bulletin, reviewing evidence that people reliably take credit for successes while deflecting blame for failures.
Everyday Use
You ace an exam and think "I studied well." You fail and think "the test was unfair." At work, a project succeeds because of your leadership; it fails because the team dropped the ball. We're all running a highlight reel in our heads where we star in every success and cameo in every failure.