Self-serving bias tends to be caused by a desire to protect an individual’s self-esteem.
Explanation:
Self-serving bias is a conceptual perception where a person attributes oneself for his/her own successes to his/her own efforts, hard work, intelligence etc., but blame others or other situations for any failures.
It acts as a defensive mechanism to protect an individual’s self-esteem.
This makes a person to favor oneself more, attribute only positive events to self, boost self confidence, feel proud about self; at the same time, blaming others or luck or other situations for failures is simply done to protect one’s self-esteem.
This behavior will make a person to move away from one’s responsibilities or cannot accept mistakes or failures and detrimental to one’s personal behavior and relationships as well as any learning outcome.
For eg., a student praising oneself for his/her success in an exam but blaming the teacher or the question paper for failure in another exam
.