group-serving bias

any one of a number of cognitive tendencies that contribute to an overvaluing of one’s group, particularly the tendency to credit the group for its successes but to blame external factors for its failures. Also called sociocentric bias. Compare self-serving bias. See also ultimate attribution error; ingroup bias.

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Psychology term of the day

December 22nd 2024

compartmentalization

n. a defense mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict or to be incompatible are isolated from each other in separate and apparently impermeable psychic compartments. In the classical psychoanalytic tradition, compartmentalization emerges in response to fragmentation of the ego, which ideally should be able to tolerate ambiguity and ambivalence. See also isolation. —compartmentalize vb.