Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception: An Experimental Investigation, Lecture notes of Social Psychology

Download Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception: An Experimental Investigation and more Lecture notes Social Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 1 Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception William von Hippel University of New South Wales Richard J. Shakarchi Ohio State University Jessica L. Lakin Drew University Abstract Three experiments tested the hypothesis self-serving biases are self-deceptive in nature. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 1 revealed that people who rated a task at which they succeeded as more important than a task at which they failed also cheated on a series of math problems, but only when they could excuse their cheating as unintentional. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that a self-report measure of self-deception did not predict this self-deceptive cheating. Experiment 3 replicated Experiments 1 and 2 and ruled out several alternative explanations. These experiments suggest that self-serving biases have a self- deceptive component, and that individual differences in self-deception can be measured. KEY WORDS: Self-deception, self-serving bias, individual differences, cheating. Correspondence should be addressed to William von Hippel, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia (w.vonhippel@unsw.edu.au). Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 2 Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception Most people associate themselves with desirable events and outcomes and distance themselves from undesirable events and outcomes (Baumeister, 1998; Schlenker, 1980; Sedikides, 1993). The most well known example of this self-serving bias (SSB) is the tendency to attribute success to internal factors such as ability and effort, and failure to external factors such as luck and task difficulty (Miller & Ross, 1975; Weary-Bradley, 1978; Zuckerman, 1979). Although there is an extensive literature on manifestations of the SSB and the conditions under which it emerges, the question of whether the SSB reflects self-presentation or self-deception remains open. There is ample evidence that self-serving biases are at least somewhat self- presentational (see Schlenker & Pontari, 2000), but it is more difficult to demonstrate that they are self-deceptive as well. There are three classes of evidence that support the role of self-deception in self-serving biases. First, self-serving biases are shown even in the absence of an audience (see Schlenker & Pontari, 2000; Schlenker & Weigold, 1992). Second, self-serving biases are exacerbated under cognitive load (Paulhus, Graf, & Van Selst, 1989; Paulhus & Levitt, 1987) when people have difficulty engaging in strategic self-presentation (cf. Gilbert, Krull, & Pelham, 1988). Although both of these lines of research suggest that self-serving biases are indeed self-deceptive, they remain inconclusive as the results are sensitive to the same criticism: Both lines of research could be interpreted as evidence that self-serving biases are merely habitual or automatized (cf. Paulhus, 1993). The fact that self-serving biases actually increase under cognitive load may be evidence of an effortful correction process (Gilbert & Malone, 1995) that people learn to use to temper their self-serving statements as they mature, so that they are not seen as self-aggrandizing (an ineffective self-presentational strategy; Godfrey, Jones, & Lord, 1986; Paulhus, 1998). Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 5 determine whether each voice sample belonged to the self or not. Galvanic skin responses (GSR) to each voice were recorded. Because all participants showed a higher GSR to voice samples from the self, people's GSR could be compared to their verbal identification of the sample to see if any self-deception was occurring. If participants' GSR indicated that the voice had been identified as the self, yet they verbally reported that the sample did not come from the self, then the first two criteria for self-deception have been met (i.e., participants simultaneously said the voice sample was not theirs and their GSR indicated that, at some level, they knew it was). To establish the third criterion for self-deception (i.e., the individual is not aware of the two contradictory beliefs), all participants went through an extensive post-experimental interview where they reported whether they were aware of having committed any errors. Very few participants were able to report whether or not they had made errors, and if so, what type they were (e.g., saying self to a voice sample when it was not self, saying not self to a voice sample that was self). The fourth criterion, the motivated unawareness of one of the contradictory beliefs, was the hardest to establish. Gur and Sackeim defined self-confrontation as correctly identifying a voice sample as the self. They hypothesized that people who are dispositionally or situationally averse to self-confrontation would be more likely to make errors in identifying a voice sample as the self. An individual difference measure of aversiveness to self-confrontation developed by Sackeim and Gur (called the Self-Deception Questionnaire; 1979) as well as a situational manipulation of failure both indicated this to be true; participant's threatened by self- confrontation were more likely to be self-deceptive. It appears that Gur and Sackeim (1979) proposed a definition of self-deception that was testable, and their studies offered the first empirical evidence that self-deception does exist. However, their definition of self-deception was still paradoxical in the sense that a self-deceptive Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 6 person had to know and not know something at the same time. Greenwald (1988) later offered a non-paradoxical definition of self-deception intended to make Sackeim and Gur's (1978) original conceptualization less restrictive. Rather than make the assumption that one must know unconsciously what is being avoided consciously, Greenwald defined self-deception as knowledge avoidance. He argued that cognitive analysis of incoming information happens in a series of stages. The first stage would be a crude analysis of the incoming information, whereas the second stage would be more elaborative processing. If information is discarded before it reaches the second stage, then no further processing would be able to occur. Thus, self-deception to Greenwald would be detecting any unwelcome content at the early stage of analysis and then failing to process that information further. Paulhus (1991) also attempted to offer a nonparadoxical definition of self-deception that built on Sackeim and Gur's pioneering work. Specifically, he was interested in developing an individual difference measure to tap self-deceptive and other-deceptive tendencies. He reformulated the items from Sackeim and Gur's Self- and Other-Deception Questionnaires (1979) and called the resulting scale the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; 1991). The BIDR contains two subscales; one is thought to measure self-deception, whereas the other is thought to measure other-deception or impression management. To assess self-deceptive tendencies, respondents complete items that reflect the tendency to have an unrealistically (and presumably impossibly) positive view of the self. For example, a respondent who strongly endorses the item "I never regret my decisions" is presumably being self-deceptive because everyone regrets a decision at some point. Paulhus argues that people who score high on this subscale are self-deceptive because they honestly believe the unrealistically positive view of themselves that they report. Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 7 Reconceptualizing Self-Deception Given the complexity of prior definitions of self-deception, it seems prudent to offer a simpler definition that is also easy to test. Sackeim and Gur (1978) offer a clinical definition where a person simultaneously holds two beliefs that are contradictory, one of which the person is unaware of because of a motivated act. While thorough, this definition is complex, restrictive, and difficult to test, as evidenced by Gur and Sackeim's (1979) empirical demonstration. Greenwald (1988) proposes a definition of self-deception in terms of knowledge avoidance, but his framework ignores large classes of behavior that would be regarded as self-deceptive by most people (such as occurs when people reinterpret or rationalize their negative behavior as positively motivated; see Steele, 1988). Likewise, Paulhus' (1991) definition of self-deception as an unrealistically positive view of the self is unnecessarily limited to the case of information about the self. Thus, in the current paper, we offer a more basic and broad definition of self- deception. At a fundamental level, self-deception can be defined as misleading oneself so that the self benefits in some way. Because the concept of “misleading” involves either deliberate deception, supplying incorrect information, or failing to supply correct information, this definition allows for both “hot” and “cold” forms of self-deception. In the present research we propose a new measure of self-deception that reflects the broader definition we have proposed, and also follows the lead of Gur and Sackeim (1979) by relying on behavioral indicators rather than self-report. Specifically, we developed a technique that allows people to cheat in a manner that is ostensibly outside of the experimenter’s awareness, and under some circumstances, also ostensibly accidental. In order to accomplish this goal, we presented people with two series of math problems that were designed to be onerous but solvable (i.e., the problems would take some time to complete and would potentially be Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 10 In order to create an individual difference measure that relies on this type of self-serving bias, we presented people with two novel tasks and gave them success feedback on one and failure feedback on the other. The novelty of the tasks was important for two reasons: 1) it increased the likelihood that participants would believe the false feedback, and 2) it ensured that they would have no basis for knowing whether the tasks were important or trivial. In contrast to Tesser and Paulhus (1983), however, we did not give participants the impression that either task was particularly meaningful. Indeed, the tasks were downplayed somewhat by communicating that they were new and we were not exactly sure what they measured. Our goal in eliminating this aspect of Tesser and Paulhus’ procedure was to decrease the overall magnitude of participants’ self-serving bias, as participants should be less likely to be self-serving on a relatively meaningless task (see Tesser & Paulhus, 1983). With this omission it thereby seemed more likely that we would create a normally distributed measure of SSB that avoided ceiling effects. Self-serving bias was measured in this procedure as the degree to which people claimed (or did not claim) that the task at which they had succeeded tapped more important qualities than the task at which they had failed. The goal of the first experiment was to assess whether this measure of self-serving bias correlated with our measure of self-deception. Experiment 1 Method Participants. 108 students participated in partial fulfillment of course requirements for introductory psychology. Each participant completed the experiment in a private cubicle. Procedure. Participants were told that we were in the process of developing several computerized tasks that were previously paper-and-pencil measures. The first task was a Mental Math Task, which consisted of 2 sets of 10 equations, with the two sets separated by a brief Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 11 break. Each equation in each set contained 10 numbers (ranging from 1 to 20) that participants were to add or subtract. The problems were designed to be onerous and time-consuming (i.e., completing them would be aversive), but due to the simple mathematics that were involved, they were not inherently difficult to solve. Participants were told that if they answered a problem incorrectly, it would re-appear on the screen until they provided the correct answer. Thus, all participants had to provide a correct answer to all 20 questions in order to complete the Mental Math Task. Participants were directed to hit the spacebar immediately upon presentation of each equation so that a response box would appear on the screen, and were told that as soon as the response box appeared they would be given as much time as they needed to solve the equation. They were specifically told that they should not try to solve the problem prior to hitting the space bar, but rather they were to hit the space bar first, thereby causing the response box to appear, and then they were to solve the problem. They were also informed that in this early stage of program development there was still a “bug” in the software, whereby if they took too long to hit the spacebar, the correct answer would unintentionally appear on the screen. Participants were told that for the first set of problems (which we refer to as the “slow math set”), this software bug was not a major problem as they had plenty of time to hit the spacebar before the correct answer would appear (the actual delay was 10 seconds). For the second set of problems (which we refer to as the “fast math set”), however, participants were warned that the software bug was more difficult to avoid, as the correct answer would appear if the spacebar was not hit within one second after the equation appeared. The experimenter reiterated that such a small amount of time may make it difficult for some people to hit the spacebar quickly enough. The experimenter also noted that it was important to try to hit the spacebar as rapidly as possible, as we would have no Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 12 way of knowing whether the software bug disrupted the experimental procedure, thereby invalidating their data. After completing the Mental Math Task, participants were told that the next tasks were being conducted in conjunction with a local mental hospital trying to understand how accurate diagnoses are made. In a counterbalanced order, participants were presented with a Suicide Note Task and a Schizophrenic Definitions Task. Each task was described in very abstract terms – the qualities and traits measured by each task were not delineated, nor was the importance of doing well on either task emphasized. For the Suicide Note Task participants read a series of 26 suicide notes, some of which were real and some of which were fake (Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975). After reading each note participants were asked to indicate whether the note was real or fake. For the Schizophrenic Definitions Task participants read a series of 26 word definitions that displayed moderately disordered thinking (Manis & Paskewitz, 1984). After reading each definition, participants were asked to indicate whether it was provided by a patient who was schizophrenic or not. Upon completion of these tasks participants received false feedback about their performance such that, in a counterbalanced fashion, they were told they did well on one task (top 17%) and poorly on the other (bottom 28%). After participants received this feedback they were asked to rate how important the skills are that are necessary to complete each task successfully. Responses to these two questions were made on a seven-point scale, ranging from “Very Unimportant” (1) to “Very Important” (7). Participants were then thoroughly probed for suspicion. First, they were asked whether anything seemed strange or unusual in the experiment. Next they were asked what they thought the experiment was attempting to demonstrate. Last they were told that the experiment wasn’t really concerned with validating computerized tasks and were asked to guess what the true goal Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 15 differential importance did not predict residual variance in cheating on the slow math task (ß = - .03, p > .65) beyond that predicted by cheating on the fast math task (ß = .74, p < .001). Although this analytic strategy of focusing on residual cheating demonstrates most clearly the relationship between self-serving biases and self-deception, it has the disadvantage of not indicating whether differences in cheating emerge between those who show a self-serving bias and those who do not. Thus, as a secondary analytic strategy, we also compared levels of cheating in both the slow and fast math tasks between those who were self-serving (difference score > 0; N = 32) and those who were not (difference score ≤ 0; N = 76). Despite the rather imprecise nature of this analysis, it revealed that self-serving participants showed greater cheating on the fast math task (M = 6.31, SD = 3.32) than non-self-serving participants (M = 4.34, SD = 3.46), t(106) = 2.74, p < .01. No reliable differences emerged in cheating on the slow math task between self-serving (M = 4.62, SD = 3.43) and non-self-serving participants (M = 3.70, SD = 3.58), t(106) = 1.24, p > .20. This analysis is rather imprecise, as not all cheating on the fast math task is self-deceptive, but it nonetheless provides additional evidence that people who show a SSB are also likely to be self-deceptive. Discussion The results of Experiment 1 suggest that self-serving biases are self-deceptive. In particular, the tendency to rate a task at which one succeeded as more important than a task at which one failed predicted the tendency to cheat on a math task when that cheating could be justified as accidental, but not when that cheating was obviously purposeful. Although the size of the relationship between SSB and self-deception was quite small, given the large discrepancy between the nature of the two tasks (cheating on a math task vs. aggrandizing success/ Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 16 minimizing failure on the suicide notes/word definitions tasks), the emergence of such a relationship is noteworthy nonetheless. It is worth pointing out that the current experiment did not reveal any evidence for an overall self-serving bias across participants. As mentioned earlier, it seems likely that a robust self-serving bias did not emerge on the differential importance measure because the meaningfulness of the two novel tasks was never emphasized to participants, and thus many of them probably felt little need to stress the importance of their success over their failure. For the purposes of the current research, however, the absence of a strong self-serving bias may even be beneficial, as it increases the variance and thus the utility of the idiographic measure of self- serving bias. Even more importantly, because the self-deception measure involved a task that was not terribly important or ego-involving (i.e., the self-deception simply enabled participants to save a little time and effort), it may be the case that the relatively equivalent (in this case low) importance of each task is necessary in order for a relationship between them to emerge. If the self-serving bias task were designed to be of such high importance that most participants were self-serving, and yet the self-deception task was of such low importance that most participants were not self-deceptive, then their incommensurate importance levels might reduce the likelihood that a relationship would emerge between them. For this reason, no effort was made in subsequent experiments to increase the perceived meaningfulness of the two novel tasks and the consequent likelihood that most participants would show a self-serving bias. Experiment 2 The findings from Experiment 1 were as predicted, but one issue that was not addressed was whether self-serving bias predicts variance in self-deception beyond that predicted by a self- report measure. Despite the fact that the self-report measures of self-deception were designed to Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 17 fit a different definition of self-deception (one focused on self-enhancement), it was deemed worthwhile to demonstrate that the measure of SSB would predict variance in self-deceptive behavior beyond that predicted by a self-report measure of self-deception. Thus, the goals of Experiment 2 were to assess whether a self-report measure of self-deception also predicts unique variance in our measure of self-deceptive cheating, and to assess whether self-serving bias predicts unique variance in self-deception beyond that predicted by a self-report scale. Method Participants. Fifty-two students participated in partial fulfillment of course requirements for introductory psychology. Procedure. The materials and procedure of Experiment 2 were identical to that of Experiment 1, with the exception that after completing the self-deception and self-serving bias tasks, participants then completed the 20 item self-deception subscale of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR-SD; Paulhus, 1991). Results Analyses again revealed significant cheating on both the slow and fast math tasks (p’s < .001), and again greater cheating on the fast (4.14) than the slow task (3.10), F(1,51) = 12.33, p < .001. Consistent with Experiment 1, participants in this experiment did not show evidence of a self-serving bias (interaction between task and feedback, F < 1, ns). A differential importance score was computed as in Experiment 1, with a mean of .06 (suicide notes task, M = 4.27, SD = 1.69; word definitions task, M = 4.56, SD = 1.09). The central question of this experiment was whether self-serving bias predicted independent variance in self-deceptive cheating, beyond that predicted by the BIDR-SD. In Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 20 responses within one second, a demonstration of this ability within the present paradigm is also important. In addition, demonstrating that people are able to hit the spacebar within one second when it is advantageous to them to do so would strengthen the claim that the cheating measure really does measure self-deception. In order to accomplish this goal, Experiment 3 contained an additional series of math tasks in which participants were required to hit the key quickly in order to prevent the math problems from becoming more difficult. According to our predictions, the measure of self- serving bias should predict inability to respond within one second when the answer is thereby caused to appear, but not inability to respond within one second when the problem is thereby made more difficult. Inclusion of this measure also addresses an alternative explanation for the findings of Experiments 1 and 2. It could be argued that there is something unique about the people who showed a self-serving bias that prevents them from hitting the spacebar within one second. That is, maybe the reason that the self-serving bias was correlated with cheating on the second task had nothing to do with self-deception, but was just driven by the inability of self-serving participants to respond quickly enough. The inclusion of this new measure can rule out this possibility. Another alternative explanation for the results of Experiments 1 and 2 is that the relationship between self-serving bias and self-deception is actually a spurious correlation driven by some participants thinking too much. That is, it is possible that participants who appear to be self-serving are simply high in Need for Cognition, and thus they thoughtfully compared their current success and failure to their past performance and determined that the tasks at which they succeed tend to be more important than the tasks at which they fail. These same thoughtful Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 21 individuals might then forget to hit the spacebar when confronted with the math problems in the fast set because they get absorbed in solving the problem, and forget to hit the space bar to prevent the answer from appearing. In order to rule out this possibility, the Need for Cognition scale (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) was included in Experiment 3. According to our predictions, Need for Cognition should be unrelated to the idiographic measure of self-serving bias, and if any relationship emerges between Need for Cognition and cheating it should be a negative one (i.e., people high in Need for Cognition should avoid cheating as they enjoy solving problems). Experiment 3 Method Participants. One hundred forty three students participated in partial fulfillment of course requirements for introductory psychology. Procedure. The materials and procedure of Experiment 3 were identical to that of Experiment 2 up through the administration of the BIDR-SD. Following this scale, participants completed the Need for Cognition scale and then a second series of math equations. For this second series of questions participants were told that the task would combine mental and physical prowess by requiring them to hit a key very quickly and then solve an equation. Participants were told that they would encounter a series of equations that consist of four numbers each, but if they took too long to hit the spacebar to initiate the response box, this equation would be replaced by an equation that contained ten numbers. As with the first math tasks, these equations were split into two sets of 10 equations. In Set 1 participants were allowed 10 seconds to hit the spacebar without consequence, whereas in Set 2 they were allowed only 1 second to hit the spacebar. Because it might have seemed odd to give participants such a long time to respond in an ostensible measure of physical prowess, participants were told that Set 1 of Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 22 this task would be easy and was intended as a warm-up for Set 2, where they would only have 1 second to hit the spacebar before their 4-number equation was replaced by a 10-number equation. They were also told that after hitting the key they would have as much time as they needed to calculate the solution. Results and Discussion Consistent with Experiments 1 and 2, no evidence emerged for a self-serving bias (interaction between task and feedback, F < 1, ns). Differential importance was computed as in Experiments 1 and 2, with a mean of .06 (suicide notes task, M = 4.63, SD = 1.54; word definitions task, M = 4.64, SD = 1.29). Analyses again revealed significant cheating on both the slow and fast math tests (p’s < .001), and again greater cheating on the fast (3.59) than the slow test (2.39), F(1,142) = 40.29, p < .001. Despite this relative inability to hit the spacebar in a timely fashion during the first two math series, participants nevertheless responded more quickly during the second two math series when failure to hit the space bar caused the problems to become more difficult. In the second series participants only failed to hit the space bar an average of .1 times in the slow test and .8 times in the fast test. Despite their small size, these means were significantly different from zero (p’s < .01), and also different from each other, F(1,132) = 26.51, p < .001.3 This finding suggests that although it was at least somewhat difficult for participants to always hit the space bar quickly enough, one second is adequate time to make this response for most people most of the time. Because failure to hit the space bar in a timely fashion in the second series of math equations made the problems more difficult, this failure rate can be interpreted as each participant’s baseline error rate, or inability to hit the space bar within the necessary time Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 25 cheating may reflect the insensitive nature of this test. Alternatively, this failure to replicate may implicate a suppression effect, which is suggested by the presence of a partial correlation between differential importance and cheating on the fast task in the absence of a bivariate relationship between these variables. In sum, the results of Experiment 3 are consistent with the findings from Experiments 1 and 2, in that self-serving bias again predicted residual cheating on the fast math task. Because Need for Cognition was not correlated with our self-serving bias measure, and was negatively correlated with cheating, these findings suggest that the “thoughtful” reinterpretation of people’s responses on the self-serving bias measure is unlikely. This study also provides an important addition to the earlier findings by demonstrating that when failure to respond quickly hurt rather than helped participants, the relationship between self-serving bias and task performance melted away. In so doing, these results suggest that the earlier findings were not an artifact of an inability on the part of some participants to respond quickly enough. Indeed, the results of Experiment 3 indicate that when baseline error rates were removed from responses, self-serving participants still showed an increase in cheating in the task that allowed self-deception. It is important to note that this increase in cheating was only marginally significant, but it is also the case that this procedure provided a particularly conservative test of the hypothesis. That is, in this procedure participants who were able to deceive themselves into failing to respond in a timely fashion in the first math task were then confronted with an almost identical math task in which self-interest now pushed them into quick responding. It is possible that the similarity in circumstances may have forced at least some participants to maintain their self-deception, requiring them to show internal consistency in their response patterns and thereby necessitating an occasional error in order to sustain the fiction that they were unable to react quickly enough in Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 26 the earlier task. Of course, this possibility is entirely conjectural, and future research will be necessary to sort it out. General Discussion The results of three experiments are consistent with the prediction that self-serving biases have a self-deceptive component. Across three studies, people who rated a verbal task at which they succeeded as more important than a verbal task at which they failed tended to cheat on a series of math problems. Because this relationship between self-serving biases and cheating only emerged when people could justify the cheating to themselves, these findings highlight the importance of self-deception in this process. Furthermore, these effects emerged despite the fact that a self-report measure of self-deception (i.e., the self-deception subscale of the BIDR) did not predict the tendency to cheat on either the self-aware or the self-deceptive cheating tasks. Thus, these results provide evidence from procedures highly discrepant from those used in previous research (e.g., Paulhus et al., 1989; Schlenker & Pontari, 2000; Shepperd, 1993) that there is a self-deceptive component to self-serving biases. Perhaps the most important aspect of these experiments is not what they tell us about self-serving biases, as to a great degree the results are consistent with the zeitgeist in the field. Rather, what is more novel about the current results is that they provide evidence concerning the empirical tractability of a more inclusive definition of self-deception, and of a procedure designed to capture it. Given the private nature of the Mental Math Task in the current studies, there was no reason for participants not to cheat to a similar degree on the slow math task as they did on the fast math task. After all, participants worked independently in private rooms, and they were told that the experimenter would not know whether they had seen any of the answers. Testifying to their belief in this claim is the substantial cheating that emerged in both the slow Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 27 and fast math tasks. Thus, the most plausible explanation for the differential cheating is that participants justified waiting for the answers in the fast condition by telling themselves that they simply could not hit the spacebar in time to avoid seeing the answer. The results from the task in which the problems become more difficult testify that this is indeed a deception, as these same participants were quite capable of hitting the space bar when it facilitated rather than interfered with their goals. Furthermore, this presumed inability to respond appears to have been a deception provided for the benefit of the self, as the experimenter was ostensibly unaware of what was happening in the participant’s cubicle and participants never offered this justification to anyone else. In combination, these results suggest that participants misled themselves because it was beneficial for them to do so. They did not want to complete the onerous math problems, so their “inability” to hit the spacebar in a timely fashion allowed them to avoid the difficult task without feeling negative affect such as guilt. It is also worth addressing why the self-deception subscale of the BIDR did not correlate with our new measure of self-deception. As noted earlier, this finding is not too surprising, given that the BIDR-SD and the cheating measure of self-deception are derived from fundamentally different definitions of self-deception. Paulhus (1991) defines self-deception as an honestly held, unrealistically positive view of the self. There is no reason to expect a scale derived from such a definition of self-deception to correlate with the cheating measure we developed here, which is based on a definition of self-deception as misleading the self. Nevertheless, one might argue that even constructs that are operationalized differently but are purportedly measures of the same latent variable should be correlated, even if that correlation is small. Given that this was not the case in Experiments 2 or 3, it is possible that the BIDR-SD is well suited to measure tendencies Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 30 Gilbert, D. T., Krull, D. S., & Pelham, B. W. (1988). Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 55, 685-694. Godfrey, D. K., Jones, E. E., & Lord, C. G. (1986). Self-promotion is not ingratiating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 106-115. Greenwald, A. G. (1988). Self-knowledge and self-deception. In J. S. Lockard & D. L. Paulhus (Eds.), Self-deception: An adaptive mechanism? (pp. 113-131). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gur, R. C. & Sackeim, H. A. (1979). Self-deception: A concept in search of a phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 147-169. Hilgard, E. R. (1949). Human motives and the concept of the self. American Psychologist, 4, 374-382. Jordan, C. H., Spencer, S. J., Zanna, M. P., Hoshino-Browne, E., & Correll, J. (in press). Secure and defensive high self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Kunda, Z. (1987). Motivated inference: Self-serving generation and evaluation of causal theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 636-647. Loftus, E. F. (1997). Memories for a past that never was. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6, 60-65. Manis, M., & Paskewitz, J. (1984). Judging psychopathology: Expectation and contrast. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 363-381. Meehl, P. E., & Hathaway, S. R. (1946). The K factor as a suppressor variable in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Journal of Applied Psychology, 30, 525-564. Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 31 Meyer, E. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1971). Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: Evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 90, 227-234. Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or Fiction? Psychological Bulletin, 82, 231-225. Murphy, G. (1970). Experiments in overcoming self-deception. Psychophysiology, 6, 790-799. Murphy, G. (1975). Outgrowing self-deception. New York: Basic Books. Paulhus, D. L. (1991). Measurement and control of response bias. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 17-59). San Diego: Academic Press. Paulhus, D. L. (1993). Bypassing the will: The automatization of affirmations. In D. Wegner & J. W. Pennebaker (Eds.), Handbook of mental control (pp. 573-587). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Paulhus, D. L. (1998). Interpersonal and intrapsychic adaptiveness of trait self-enhancement: A mixed blessing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1197-1208. Paulhus, D. L., Graf, P., & Van Selst, M. (1989). Attentional load increases the positivity of self- presentation. Social Cognition, 7, 389-400. Paulhus, D. L., & Levitt, K. (1987). Desirable responding triggered by affect: Automatic egotism? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 245-259. Plato. (1953). In R. Jowett (Ed. and Trans.), The dialogues of Plato (Vol. 3). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Original work published circa 386 B.C.). Self-Serving Bias and Self-Deception 32 Ross, L., Lepper, M. R., & Hubbard, M. (1975). Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 880-892. Sackeim, H. A. (1988). Self-deception: A synthesis. In J. S. Lockard & D. L. Paulhus (Eds.), Self-deception: An adaptive mechanism? (pp. 146-165). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sackeim, H. A., & Gur, R. C. (1978). Self-deception, self-confrontation, and consciousness. In G. Schwartz & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 2, pp. 139-197). New York: Plenum Press. Sartre, J. P. (1958). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (H. Barnes, Trans.). London: Methuen. (Original work published 1943). Schlenker, B. R. (1980). Impression management: The self-concept, social identity, and interpersonal relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole. Schlenker, B. R., & Pontari, B. A. (2000). The strategic control of information: Impression management and self-presentation in daily life. In A. Tesser & R. B. Felson (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on self and identity (pp. 199-232). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Schlenker, B. R., & Weigold, M. F. (1992). Interpersonal processes involving impression regulation and management. Annual Review of Psychology, 43, 133-168. Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self- evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.