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Self-Enhancement Motivational Bias In Attributions Of Causality And Responsibility To A Target Other : Situational And Dispositional Determinants, Jennifer Leigh Dent

Master's Theses

Prior research has shown that people often self-enhance to protect their self-concept from harm. The present research was designed to investigate situational and dispositional determinants of people's tendency to make self-enhancing attributions to a partner to whom they either do or do not feel psychologically connected to. In Experiment 1, participants who had been induced to self-extend to a partner made greater attributions of causality to the partner when the partner's fate was positive than when it was negative. Experiment 2 provided evidence for a dispositional component of self-extension, and indicated that perceivers' attributions to a partner are further influenced …