Buying boards (self-serving bias)

Moon (2003) presented that in accordance with the self-serving bias, when consumer shopping online made purchases that had positive outcomes they felt that they were responsible for these outcomes, but whenever something went wrong with the purchase the computer got the blame. In my own personal experience I have made this form of the self-serving bias when purchasing my surfboards. As you all should know by now I surf, and I started when I was 15 years old. The first board I owned was a 8’6” funboard that worked like a charm and never gave me any trouble and I felt that I had made a good purchase and that I was a decent surfer. Two years after that I wanted to graduate to a short board, and so I went to the same guy that made my first board, knowing that he was one of the best board makers on the gulf coast. I picked out a 6’4” thruster that was previously a competition board. However, the first few times that I took the board out I discovered that it was a “sinker,” a board that is prone to sinking under the weight of the rider, and instead of thinking, “oh, well I just need more practice to get better at riding the board.” I immediately blamed the board and the man that had sold it to me. The board wasn’t good enough and he had ripped me off. However, the fact that boards are expensive and I was a broke highschool student well on my way to becoming a broke college student I kept the board, and reluctantly practiced with it until I started to notice that I was improving and once again it was well because I was such an awesome surfer. I did all this knowing that comparatively I am not all that great of a surfer and that the board I bought were both very good high quality boards, but it did make me feel better about my self, and as we discussed in class that is really the main function of the self-serving bias.

Moon, Youngme (2003). Don’t blame the computer: When self-disclosure moderates the
self-serving bias. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13(1&2), 125-137

shark attacks and coconuts (availability heuristics)

Keller, Siegrist, and Gutscher (2006) presented that a link between affect and availability heuristics presented by Tversky and kahneman (1982) is evidence that a negative affect such as fear can lead people, through the availability heuristic to perceive a greater level of risk in certain situations. I have seen this effect first hand, and I am sure that many of you have in the same way. Though this is not truly a personal experience as I have never personally been attacked by a shark the news reports almost every shark attack that happens each year, which leads many people to believe that a shark attack is far more likely than it actually is. In fact, if you mention the beach to most people the first thing they mention is sharks and the fear they have for them. I would argue that the fear stems from the readily available information on shark attacks, as every fatal attack that happens as rare as they are is posted on the news usually for a few days. My reason for this is that although shark attacks kill an average of ten people per year worldwide an average of 150 people a year are killed by having a coconut fall on their heads, and yet people don’t seem to be all that afraid of coconuts likely because there are never reports of coconut “attacks” on the news. This is my evidence for the availability heuristic at the very least playing some role in peoples’ fear of sharks, because although it is about 15 times as likely that an individual will be “attacked” by a coconut than a shark the deaths due to coconuts go unreported whereas the shark attacks are hyped up and reported on a regular basis making the information readily available.