Abstract: It is very common that people often attribute desirable outcomes to their ability or efforts, and attribute undesirable outcomes to others or situation. The tendency that people take personal credit when they succeed and deny their responsibility for failure is called self-serving bias. Today, the theoretical explanations for this bias have not been reached unified conclusion. The debate mainly focuses on whether the self-serving bias was produced by cognitive drive or by motivation, or by both. Lots of research shows that self-serving bias is widespread in the daily life and affected by age, gender, culture, and psychopathology. However, the research on its brain mechanism is relatively rare. Future research should extend the study of the self-serving bias to non-depressed psychopathological groups and other different populations. In addition, the brain mechanism of self-serving bias, its cross-cultural research, and the applicability of foreign research results in China will also be emphasized in the future.

Key words: attribution, self-serving bias, self-enhancement, self-presentation