Self-serving attributions in Teachers' explanations of Students' performance in a National Oral Essay Competition

The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of self-serving and ingroup-outgroup biases on teachers' attributions and evaluation of students' performances. The participants were 51 senior secondary school students whose performances in an oral essay competition were evaluated by a panel of 5 judges. After the competition, the teachers were asked to make attributions of their students' performances in the competition. The findings revealed that the teachers of the successful students attributed the success to internal factors while the teachers of the unsuccessful students attributed the students' failures to external factors. It was concluded that self-serving and ingroup-outgroup biases influenced the teachers' attributions and judgment of their students' performances.