Blaming luck, claiming skill: Self-attribution bias in error assignment
  • Okamoto, Naoyuki
  • Taylor, Michael
  • Kubo, Takatomi
  • Ishii, Shin
  • De Martino, Benedetto
  • ... Cortese, Aurelio
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초록

Mistakes are valuable learning opportunities, yet in uncertain environments, whether a lack of reward is due to poor performance or bad luck can be hard to tell. To investigate how humans address this issue, we developed a visuomotor task where rewards depended on either skill or chance. Participants consistently displayed a self-attribution bias, crediting successes to their own ability while blaming failures on randomness, an effect that influenced their subsequent decisions. Computational modelling revealed two underlying mechanisms-a distorted perception of ability and a positivity bias in the skill condition. Notably, while distorted self-perception shaped behaviour, it did not affect confidence; instead, self-attribution bias led to overconfidence in external blame. These findings suggest a more complex picture in which self-attribution biases arise from both perceptual distortions and post-decision evaluations, highlighting the need for an interplay between experimental design and computational modelling to understand behavioural biases.

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제목
Blaming luck, claiming skill: Self-attribution bias in error assignment
저자
Okamoto, NaoyukiTaylor, MichaelKubo, TakatomiIshii, ShinDe Martino, BenedettoCortese, Aurelio
DOI
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013787
발행일
2025-12-16
유형
Article
저널명
PLoS Computational Biology
21
12
페이지
e1013787