Accounting for the situational context of accountability / Welton Chang.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Chang, Welton, author.

Contributor:

Tetlock, Philip E. (Philip Eyrikson), 1954- degree supervisor.

Duckworth, Angela L., degree committee member.

Goodwin, Geoffrey P., 1977- degree committee member.

Mellers, Barbara A., degree committee member.

University of Pennsylvania. Department of Psychology, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Psychology.

Psychology--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Psychology.

Psychology--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

x, 179 leaves : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

2018.

Summary:

Accountability is often presented as a panacea for behavioral ailments. This one-size-fits-all approach to a multi-dimensional construct ignores a key component of the effectiveness of accountability systems: situational context. Situational contexts such as highly stochastic environments (e.g., financial markets, world politics) and politically-charged domains (e.g., national security decision-making, domestic policy) form accountability boundary conditions, beyond which previous experimental effects may not generalize. In a series of studies, I explore the relatively under-explored frontiers of accountability effects, including those that apply to highly stochastic environments; politically-charged outcomes, where the tendency towards motivated reasoning dominates; and rapidly evolving states of information, where one's ability to update one's beliefs has serious implications for the quality of one's judgments and decisions. In this series of studies, I find that accountability effects only appeared under certain conditions. In general, holding people accountable for their judgments did not improve performance on highly stochastic or politically-charged tasks--in fact, it sometimes made performance worse. However, certain types of accountability were able to boost performance in some contexts. These studies demonstrate the value of incorporating situational context into accountability experiments.

Notes:

Ph. D. University of Pennsylvania 2018

Department: Psychology.

Supervisor: Philip E. Tetlock.

Includes bibliographical references.

OCLC:

1314853025