Self-Serving Bias

My best friend is extremely competitive. He excels at just about everything he does - especially in the realm of sports.  He has all the best equipment associated with any sport you can imagine.  Just last week, he took his family bowling.  He has his own high quality shoes and bowling ball.  No, he hasn't ever played in a league.  He just puts all of himself into whatever it is he is doing.  This has been passed down to his son Gabe.  Gabe is a great kid.  Similar to his father, he puts his whole heart and soul into everything he does.  He is very competitive and is devastated when he loses.  Unfortunately, Gabe has one small (pardon the pun) problem - he is short.  And he is very self-conscious about it.  We reassure him that he will have a growth spurt soon and will be just as tall as his father and I, but this seems to be of little consolation to him.
When playing basketball, if he plays well and makes a lot of points, he is quick to brag about his skill level.  When he plays poorly, he points out that the other team’s players were too tall and he never had a chance – even when this is not the case. “Many dozens of experiments have found that people accept credit when told they have succeeded. They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to external factors, such as bad luck or the problem's inherent impossibility” (Myers & Twenge, 2015, p. 49).  Gabe's father and I had a little chuckle when we pointed out to him that the game in which he was bragging about how well he played was actually against the same team that he insisted the players were too tall and that he just didn't have a chance.  The games were a few weeks apart and he failed to realize this.  Either the opposing team grew several inches in two weeks, or Gabe was serving as a great illustration of self-serving bias.  
It has been noted that self-serving bias can be linked with poor self esteem (Boyce, 2013).  When someone suffers from poor self-esteem, their responses are flipped.  Rather than claiming responsibility for positive things, he/she attributes them to chance.  When something negative happens he/she takes the blame.  Gabriel is very sensitive about his height but he doesn't have the attributes of a person with low self-esteem.

Boyce, Alice. (2013). The Self-Serving Bias: Definition, Research, and Antidotes. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201301/the-self-serving-bias-definition-research-and-antidotes
Myers, D., Twenge, J.  (10/2015). Social Psychology, 12th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version].  Retrieved from vbk://1260372464