How success enhances self-serving bias: A multinomial process model of the Implicit Association Test

Self-serving bias is individuals’ belief that leads them to blame external forces when bad things happen and to give themselves credit when good things happen. To evaluate how underlying evaluative associations toward the self or others differ between individuals, and/or how the regulation mechanism of the influence of such associations differs, we used a multinomial process model to measure the underlying implicit self-esteem in these processes with 56 Chinese undergraduate students. The results indicated that participants assessed themselves as being better than others when their performance was followed by a desirable outcome. Subsequent application of the quadruple processes showed that both activation of positive associations toward self and regulation of the associations played important roles in attitudinal responses. Our findings may provide a supplementary explanation to that of previous results, promoting understanding of the mechanism underlying self-serving bias.