You worked hard, but I was born this way: A self-other discrepancy in the attribution and communication of skill.

In a series of 6 studies, we find that people are more likely to attribute their own (vs. others’) skill to innate ability rather than to effort because such attributions boost people’s their self-concept. We label this self-other discrepancy the “natural talent bias.” The self-enhancing potential of innate ability attribution stems from people’s beliefs about innate ability being the rarer source of skill than effort, which makes the possessor special. Across various skill domains (e.g., games, baking, languages), we first show that people hold this bias (Studies 1 – 3, 6) and that it is driven by the self-enhancing nature of innate ability attribution (Study 2). Accordingly, we demonstrate a boundary condition for the natural talent bias which connects to enhancing self-concept: when it comes to one’s weak skill, people no longer exhibit the natural talent bias because effort (vs. innate ability) attribution for their own (vs. others’) weak skill is more self-enhancing (Study 6). Moreover, we show that the bias creates a mismatch in communication preferences such that communicators highlight innate ability as the reason for their skill, whereas audiences prefer and advise communicators to convey effort (Studies 2 – 4), which extends to market outcomes such as perceived product appeal (Study 4) and incentive-compatible product choice (Study 5). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.