Attributional styles of lonely college students

Abstract

Men are sometimes more self-serving than women when making causal attributions for success and failure. It may be that lonely men differ from lonely women in the amount of self-serving bias they show when making causal attributions for interpersonal success and failure. A self-serving bias scale was constructed. Along with the UCLA Loneliness Scale, it was administered to 74 male and 136 female undergraduates. Loneliness was related to amount of self-serving bias. Lonely respondents tended to be less self-serving than non-lonely respondents, replicating previous research. Neither gender nor other demographic information was related to self-serving bias. Insensitivity of the self-serving bias scale and true lack of gender differences in the situation studied are both discussed as possible reasons for failure to find gender difference.