Primed Goals as a Moderator of Accountability Induced Conformity

摘要

Past research has dealt with many situations suggesting that accountability, or being answerable for one's actions or thoughts, to an audience with known views creates a conforming tendency. This study was designed to test the boundaries of that traditional paradigm. Participants took part in what they perceived as two separate studies on decision making. The first introduced a prime disguised as everyday decision-making scenarios that elicited either an accuracy orientation or a getting-along orientation. The second study consisted of a business administration scenario dealing with money allocation between two alternative products. Although both accountable and unaccountable participants viewed another participant's (actually a confederate's) decision, only accountable participants receiving the accuracy prime failed to show a conformity effect. This study provides encouraging results in one of the first steps toward refining the widely accepted social psychological theory that accountability predisposes people to conform to a judging audience. Furthermore, given the widespread use of accountability in such varied arenas as business, military service, engineering, medicine, etc., the results of this study could have useful policy implications for organizations across the nation. This study suggests that training or accountability alone may not produce the desired results of independent critical thinking; a combination of the two seems necessary.