People tend to overestimate the contribution of internal factors to their successes and overestimate the contribution of external factors to their failures. This tendency is called:

A) fundamental attribution error.

B) self-serving bias.

C) perceptual defense.

D) attribution theory.

B) self-serving bias.

Explanation:

Self-serving bias is a term used in social psychology to describe a form of cognitive bias whereby people tend to interpret or explain positive events as being caused by their personality or character, while they interpret the cause of negative events as brought about by external factors. In simple terms, people tend to attribute the cause of negative events to external factors while they take credit for positive events and believe it is because of their personality that such positive events was able to occur. This is usually done in an attempt to achieve self-esteem.