After your school’s football team has a big win, students in the halls can be heard saying “We are awesome.” The next week, after the team loses to the last-place team in the league, the same students lament that “They were terrible.” The difference

(B) self-serving bias.

The students in the school are evidencing self-serving bias, the tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than bad ones. When the football team wins, they want to identify with them and therefore say “We are awesome.” When that same team loses, the students distance themselves from the players, explaining that “They were terrible.” Fundamental attribution error is a different attributional bias. It explains that people overestimate the role of personal factors when explaining other people’s behavior. The self-fulfilling prophecy effect is the finding that people’s expectations about others can influence the behavior of those others. The false consensus effect is another example of an attributional bias. It says that people overestimate the number of people who share their beliefs. Finally, conformity is the tendency for people to go along with a group.