The self-serving bias causes people to take credit for their successes but blame failures on external factors. When the author's basketball team won their first match, his teammates told others it was due to their own talents, not the author's leadership. However, after the author was injured and replaced as captain, the team blamed their loss in the final match on the new captain's poor leadership, not their lack of training, demonstrating their self-serving bias.

1. Self-Serving Bias
29/2/14
The self-serving bias is the tendency for a person to take credit for whatever he or she
has accomplished but put the blame on external sources for his or her failures. We believe that
our successes are results of our internal traits and talents while our failures are the results of
external traits where most of them are unpredictable. Once, I was elected as team captain for
my school’s basketball team, where I had to lead my team to victory against our high school
rivals. After two weeks of intense training, I brought the potential out of my teammates. They
were all talented in the game and were ready for the match. Our first friendly match and we
trashed our rival’s team hard. My teammates told others of our success and it was because of
them, the team won. I took no personal affliction for their saying, as what they said was
partially true. Because of their talents, they were able to pull through to victory. However, a
month later, I was involved in a sky diving accident, where I broke my arm and leg in the event.
It was about two weeks before our final match with our rivals, and my team had to replace me
with another captain. Since my teammates had no doubts for their talent the sport, they
stopped training for the rest of the two weeks. When the match was on, our team did horribly,
blaming the new captain for not leading them well enough after the loss. From this experience,
I can see that there was a self-serving bias in our team, where my teammates took credit for
their first match’s success but blamed the new captain for their loss in the final match.