Self-Serving Bias in the Implicit and Explicit Evaluation of Partners and Exes as Parents

The quality of partners’ relationship can be influenced by the reciprocal respect of the other’s parenting role, especially when the couple breaks up. This study is aimed at investigating the implicit versus explicit self-serving biases in the evaluation of partners and exes as parents (or potential parents), exploring sex differences and possible relationships with dyadic cohesion. Two Implicit Association Tests and two semantic differentials, comparing each respondent with current partners and last significant exes, and also a scale measuring dyadic cohesion were administered to 108 participants (40 men; M age = 28.1 yr., SD = 8.7). As expected, participants assessed themselves as better than others on both IAT and self-report evaluations, with larger effects toward exes than toward partners and on implicit than explicit measures. Women devalued exes, but not partners, more than men. Dyadic cohesion scores were negatively correlated with the explicit evaluations of partners but not with implicit ones. Theoretical interpretations in terms of self-serving bias were discussed.