Linda J. Skitka

Social and Cognitive Strategies for Coping With Accountability: Conformity, Complexity, and Bolstering

This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability.

Moral conviction: another contributor to attitude strength or something more?

Attitudes held with strong moral conviction (moral mandates) were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong but nonmoral attitudes. After controlling for indices of attitude strength, the authors explored the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical (Study 3) distance from attitudinally dissimilar others and the effects of moral conviction on group interaction and decision making in attitudinally homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups (Study 4). Results supported the moral mandate hypothesis: Stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and distant relationships (e.g., owner of a store one frequents), (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, and (d) a greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements.

Dispositions, scripts, or motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems.

attributional judgments under varying levels of cognitive load) explored whether these differences could be explained by (a) underlying dispositional differences in the tendency to see the causes of behavior as personally or situationally located, (b) ideological scripts, or (c) differences in the motivation to correct personal attributions. Results were most consistent with the motivated correction explanation. The findings shed further light on the cognitive strategies and motivational priorities of liberals and conservatives.

Do the Means Always Justify the Ends, or Do the Ends Sometimes Justify the Means? A Value Protection Model of Justice Reasoning

This study explored whether personal identity concerns relate in important ways to how people decide whether an event is fair or unfair. Because moral mandates are selective expressions of values that are central to people’s sense of personal identity, people should be highly motivated to protect these positions from possible threat. Consistent with predictions based on a value protection model of justice, whether people had a moral mandate on abortion, civil rights, or immigration was completely independent of the perceived procedural fairness of political institutions when those institutions posed no salient threat to these policy concerns. However, strength of moral mandate, and not prethreat judgments of procedural fairness of the Supreme Court or a state referendum, predicted perceived procedural fairness, outcome fairness, decision acceptance, and other indices of moral outrage when either the Supreme Court or a state referendum posed a possible threat to perceivers’ moral mandates.

Political Tolerance and Coming to Psychological Closure Following the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks: An Integrative Approach

This study tested hypotheses generated from an integrative model of political tolerance that derived hypotheses from a number of different social psychological theories (e.g., appraisal tendency theory, intergroup emotion theory, and value protection models) to explain political tolerance following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A national field study (N = 550) found that immediate post attack anger and fear had different implications for political tolerance 4 months later. The effects of anger on political tolerance were mediated through moral outrage and outgroup derogation, whereas the effects of fear on political tolerance were mediated through personal threat, ingroup enhancement, and value affirmation. Value affirmation led to increased political tolerance, whereas moral outrage, outgroup derogation, ingroup enhancement, and personal threat led to decreased political tolerance. Value affirmation, moral outrage, and outgroup derogation also facilitated post-9/11 psychological closure and increased psychological closure led to greater political tolerance.

Does automation bias decision-making?

Computerized system monitors and decision aids are increasingly common additions to critical decision-making contexts such as intensive care units, nuclear power plants and aircraft cockpits. These aids are introduced with the ubiquitous goal of “reducing human error”. The present study compared error rates in a simulated flight task with and without a computer that monitored system states and made decision recommendations. Participants in non-automated settings out-performed their counterparts with a very but not perfectly reliable automated aid on a monitoring task. Participants with an aid made errors of omission (missed events when not explicitly prompted about them by the aid) and commission (did what an automated aid recommended, even when it contradicted their training and other 100% valid and available indicators). Possible causes and consequences of automation bias are discussed

Exploring the Psychological Underpinnings of the Moral Mandate Effect: Motivated Reasoning, Group Differentiation, or Anger?

When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, their judgments of both outcome and procedural fairness become driven more by whether outcomes support or oppose their moral mandates than by whether procedures are proper or improper (the moral mandate effect). Two studies tested 3 explanations for the moral mandate effect. In particular, people with moral mandates may (a) have a greater motivation to seek out procedural flaws when outcomes fail to support their moral point of view (the motivated reasoning hypothesis), (b) be influenced by in-group distributive biases as a result of identifying with parties that share rather than oppose their moral point of view (the group differentiation hypothesis), or (c) react with anger when outcomes are inconsistent with their moral point of view, which, in turn, colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results support the anger hypothesis.

Understanding Judgments of Fairness in a Real-World Political Context: A Test of the Value Protection Model of Justice Reasoning

Current theories of justice emphasize social identity reasons for why people care about justice to the relative neglect of personal identity concerns, that is, people’s need to express, defend, and live up to personal moral standards. The authors present a value protection model that predicts that self-expressive moral positions or stands (“moral mandates”) are important determinants of how people reason about fairness. Hypotheses were tested and supported in the context of a natural experiment: reactions of a national random sample of adults to the Elián González case pre-raid, post-raid, and then post-resolution of the case. Models that included strength of moral mandates, but not pre-raid judgments of procedural fairness, best predicted reactions to the raid and post-resolution judgments of both procedural and outcome fairness and were associated with expressions of moral outrage and attempts to morally cleanse.

Are Outcome Fairness and Outcome Favorability Distinguishable Psychological Constructs? A Meta-Analytic Review

Manipulations of outcome favorability and outcome fairness are frequently treated as interchangeable, and assumed to have redundant effects. Perceptions of outcome fairness and outcome favorability are similarly presumed to have common antecedents and consequences. This research tested the empirical foundation of these assumptions by conducting a meta-analytic review of the justice literature (N = 89 studies). This review revealed that outcome fairness is empirically distinguishable from outcome favorability. Specifically: (a) there is weaker evidence of the fair process effect when the criterion is outcome fairness than when it is outcome favorability, (b) outcome fairness has stronger effects than outcome favorability, and equally strong or stronger effects as procedural fairness on a host of variables, such as job turnover and organizational commitment, and (c) manipulations of outcome fairness and favorability have stronger effects on perceptions of procedural fairness than the converse.

Accountability and automation bias

Although generally introduced to guard against human error, automated devices can fundamentally change how people approach their work, which in turn can lead to new and different kinds of error. The present study explored the extent to which errors of omission (failures to respond to system irregularities or events because automated devices fail to detect or indicate them) and commission (when people follow an automated directive despite contradictory information from other more reliable sources of information because they either fail to check or discount that information) can be reduced under conditions of social accountability. Results indicated that making participants accountable for either their overall performance or their decision accuracy led to lower rates of “automation bias”. Errors of omission proved to be the result of cognitive vigilance decrements, whereas errors of commission proved to be the result of a combination of a failure to take into account information and a belief in the superior judgement of automated aids.