BazermanMoore

94 Chapter 5: Motivational and Emotional Influences on Decision Making
Positive illusions lead organizational members to claim an inappropriately large proportion
of the credit for positive outcomes, to overestimate their value to the organization,
and to set objectives that have little chance of success (Kramer, 1994). Self-enhancing
interpretations of negative outcomes also prevent organizational members from learning
from their poor decisions (Morris & Moore, 2000).
SELF-SERVING REASONING
The West blames the Third World for burning the rain forests and for overpopulation.
At the same time, the Third World blames the West for pollution caused by
industrialization and excessive consumption.
A U.S. News & World Report survey asked, ‘‘If someone sues you and you win the
case, should he pay your legal costs?’’ Eighty-five percent of respondents answered
‘‘yes.’’ However, only 44 percent answered ‘‘yes’’ to this question: ‘‘If you sue someone
and lose the case, should you pay his costs?’’ (Budiansky, Gest, & Fischer,
1995, p. 52).
The use of tall smokestacks to reduce local air pollution contributes to the regional
problem of acid rain. The higher the air pollution, the farther it travels from its
source (Gore, 1992). When Northeastern Canada is affected by acid rain, citizens
blame the industrialization of the Northeast and Midwest United States. The
United States denies responsibility, claiming acid rain may be caused by the local
burning of coal.
Perceptions and expectations are often biased in a self-serving manner (Babcock &
Loewenstein, 1997; Diekmann, Samuels, Ross, & Bazerman, 1997). When presented
with identical information, individuals perceive a situation in dramatically different
ways, depending on their role in the situation (Babcock, Loewenstein, Issacharoff, &
Camerer, 1995). Specifically, individuals first determine their preference for a certain
outcome on the basis of self-interest and then justify this preference on the basis of
fairness by changing the importance of attributes affecting what is fair (Messick &
Sentis, 1983). While people frequently have the goal of reaching a fair solution, their
assessments of what is fair are often biased by self-interest. For example, it is common
for all parties in a conflict to suggest differing viable but self-serving solutions, which
each party justifies based on abstract fairness criteria. Self-serving reasoning allows
people to believe that it is honestly fair for them to have more of a given resource than
an independent advisor would judge. The problem lies not in a desire to be unfair but
in our failure to interpret information in an unbiased manner (Diekmann, Samuels,
Ross, & Bazerman, 1997; Messick & Sentis, 1983).
Hastorf and Cantril (1954) asked student football fans from Princeton and Dartmouth
to view a short film of a football game between the two schools. Although both
sides watched the same film, each side thought the opposing team played less fairly and
engaged in more aggressive and unsportsmanlike conduct. The researchers observed
that the two groups of students ‘‘saw a different game.’’ Similarly, in a study of arms
control negotiations, Sutton and Kramer (1990) found that both sides of the Cold War