Question

Seema was the captain of her school’s football team. She reprimanded her team members who came late for practice but justified her late coming by saying that her roles and responsibilities as a captain kept her engaged.

Which one of the following biases did Seema exhibit?

Options

• Self-serving bias

• Automatic vigilance

• False consensus effect

• Counterfactual thinking

Answer 1

Self-serving bias

Explanation:

Seema had a self-serving bias because she used different standards to evaluate her own behaviour than her teammates’. By blaming her own tardiness on “roles and responsibilities”, she attributed it to external environmental reasons, but her teammates’ tardiness was most likely a personal defect. This prejudice enables a person to safeguard their self-esteem by explaining their own flaws with situational justifications while holding others personally accountable for similar actions.