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Self-Serving Bias In Performance Goal Achievement Appraisals: Evidence From Long-Distance Runners, Moonsup Hyun, Wonsok F. Jee, Christine Wegner, Jeremy S. Jordan, James Du, Taeyeon Oh

Faculty and Student Publications

While working with a long-distance running event organizer, the authors of this study observed considerable differences between event participants’ official finish time (i.e., bib time) and their self-reported finish time in the post-event survey. Drawing on the notion of self-serving bias, we aim to explore the source of this disparity and how such psychological bias influences participants’ event experience at long-distance running events. Using evidence of 1,320 marathon runners, we demonstrated how people are more likely to be subject to a biased self-assessment contingent upon achieving their best finish time at the event. The study samples were split into record-high-achieved …