Definition
Self-enhancement bias refers to people’s general tendency to endorse self-views in various domains that are more favorable than is warranted by objective reality.
Introduction
Decades of findings have revealed that people strategically construct lofty, highly favorable self-views that often surpass (in favorability) the objective data that exist to support them. These self-enhancement biases – which manifest in myriad forms – reflect people’s general tendency to endorse self-views in various dispositional, behavioral, moral, judgment, and performance domains that are more favorable than is warranted by reality (Alicke and Sedikides 2009). Importantly, such biases are strategic in nature. Put differently, self-enhancement biases emerge due to individuals’ motivated desire to maximize the positivity of one’s self-concept, an end that is achieved by activating various motivated cognitive tactics that...
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Weiner, D.S., Guenther, C.L. (2020). Self-Enhancement Bias. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1905
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_1905
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