The More Rational Side of Self-Serving Prototypes: The Effects of Success and Failure Performance Feedback

People have a tendency to believe that the attributes they view as self-descriptive are more important for success than those they view as non-self-descriptive. That is, the prototypes that people possess of social concepts tend to be self-serving. We propose that this bias may arise because people rationally infer from their experiences of achievement that their personal skills and characteristics are related to success. In two studies, the correlation between participants' self-ratings on number of attributes related to a domain and their ratings of importance of those attributes to success within that domain was examined before and after performance feedback was provided. As expected, those who received success feedback came to perceive a stronger relationship between “what they had” and “what it takes to succeed” than did those who received failure feedback. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the development and consequences of self-serving prototypes.