{"id":1054,"date":"2021-09-27T09:12:44","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T13:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2021-09-27T09:12:44","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T13:12:44","slug":"the-self-serving-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/27\/the-self-serving-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"The Self-Serving Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You undoubtedly know yourself better than anyone else knows you.  After all, you alone have unfettered access to your thoughts, feelings, and motivations.

At the same time, ironically, you probably know yourself less well<\/em> than other people know you. 

That\u2019s because you exist at the center of a bundle of self-protecting, self-justifying, impression-managing behaviors that you\u2019ve practiced for so long you hardly notice them anymore \u2013 but which other people can spot a mile away.

Psychologists call it the self-serving bias.  It\u2019s a blind spot with regard to our integrity \u2013 and an extraordinarily effective way of fooling ourselves.  In a nutshell, we commonly take credit for positive events or outcomes, but tend to blame outside factors whenever things go wrong. 

When athletes win the big game they attribute their success to talent.  If they lose they\u2019re much quicker to complain about meteorological conditions or refs’ blown calls.  If a job interview goes well, we congratulate ourselves on being a remarkable candidate.  If we receive one of those \u201cwe regret to inform you\u201d letters a few days later, we conclude that the interviewer had it in for us from the start. 

A majority of drivers who are hospitalized for accidents that they caused<\/em>, when interviewed, profess to be better-than-average drivers.  When told that the self-serving bias tends to distort self-awareness, most people confidently report that they\u2019re better at handling it than other people.

In fact, all things considered, a great majority of us are pretty sure we\u2019re knocking it out of the park, while other people are living pretty messed-up lives.

Did you know that 25% of high school students believe that they belong in the top 1% of all students when it comes to social skills, and that in a poll a few years ago of 800,000 students, not one \u2013 and we mean not one single student \u2013 placed themselves in the lower half of students nationwide?  Did you know that 88% of college professors believe they should be ranked amongst the top educators?  And that 90% of pastors are convinced they are above average preachers? 

I sure am glad I\u2019m not one of those self-deceived pastors.  It\u2019s common knowledge that I really am<\/em> an above average preacher. 

About two decades ago, U.S. News and World Report <\/em>published the results of a survey in the issue that hit newsstands just before Easter.  They asked respondents, \u201cWho do you think is most likely to go to heaven?\u201d

That\u2019s a provocative question for a general audience in a secular culture. 

It was not a surprise that Mother Teresa \u2013 who was alive at the time, and was the closest thing to a contemporary saint \u2013 came in first:  79% of respondents thought she was in pretty good spiritual shape.  It would be fascinating to find out why the other 21% gonged her. 

Who came in second?  Why, Oprah Winfrey, of course, at 66%. Then came Michael Jordan at 65% and General Colin Powell at 61%.  Hillary Clinton came in at 52%, with her husband Bill trailing at 46%. 

Farther down the scale were Newt Gingrich at 40% and Dennis Rodman at 28%, (who, you might recall, was revealed to be an extraterrestrial in the movie Men in Black<\/em>).  Someone had to come in last.  That turned out to be O.J. Simpson at 19%. 

But here\u2019s the real kicker.  The folks who filled out the survey were asked, \u201cDo you think that you <\/em>are on your way to heaven?\u201d  A whopping 87% said yes, leaving Mother Teresa in the dust.  Americans are nothing if not spiritually confident.

But of course our spiritual confidence can hardly be said to be well-placed.  We all need a serious dose of reality.  We all need a serious refresher course in our ongoing need for God\u2019s grace in every area of life \u2013 in our decisions, our words, our actions, our motives. 

What drives the self-serving bias? 

Psychologists agree that it\u2019s fear \u2013 the fear that we\u2019ll be found out and revealed to be phonies.  We desperately want to protect our self-image.  We don\u2019t want to think of ourselves as negligent or incompetent or unspiritual.    

At the core of the Good News is the announcement that God has the antidote for such anxiety:  \u201cPerfect love drives out fear\u201d (I John 4:18). 

God\u2019s love wins the day.  We don\u2019t need to waste our lives struggling with impression management.  We cannot impress a God who already knows us from the inside out \u2013 better than we or anyone else can possibly know us \u2013 and still loves us<\/em>.    

C.S. Lewis puts it more dramatically:

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.  Lose your life and you will save it.  Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end:  Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.  Keep back nothing.  Nothing that you have not given away will really be yours.  Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.  Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.  But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.<\/em>

You can never be Mother Teresa. 

But of course you don\u2019t need to be Mother Teresa, either.

It\u2019s enough to be yourself, abandoned as best you can, to the God whose love will never let you down.
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You undoubtedly know yourself better than anyone else knows you.  After all, you alone have unfettered access to your thoughts, feelings, and motivations. At the same time, ironically, you probably know yourself less well than other people know you.  That\u2019s because you exist at the center of a bundle of self-protecting, self-justifying, impression-managing behaviors that you\u2019ve practiced for so long… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[276,338],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-impression-management","tag-surrender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}