Self-presentation strategies and social judgments - desirability and social utility of causal explanations

The research reported here examined the desirability and social utility of causal explanations. The first two studies analyzed the causal explanations (internal vs. external) of desirable and undesirable events spontaneously chosen by students to make a good impression on their teachers (self-presen tation paradigm). They also compared these students' self-presentational st rategies (internal vs, self-serving vs. modest vs. external) with their jud gments (judge-paradigm) about four student-targets, each characterized by o ne of the four strategies, thus including their own, to explain the causes of the same desirable and undesirable events. Study 3 explored how teachers of students in the second study judge the same four student-targets used i n the previous studies. Based on the distinction between two types of value s - desirability and social utility - it was hypothesized that all particip ants, even students who previously adopted a desirable self-serving strateg y, would in the judge-paradigm prefer the internal target, given the social utility of internal explanations. The hypotheses were confirmed. The relev ance of these results for a conception of social utility of internal causal explanations is discussed.