Taking a secong look - Revising the effects of process and outcome accountability
von Johannes Rollwage
Datum der mündl. Prüfung:2022-12-05
Erschienen:2022-12-12
Betreuer:Prof. Dr. Stefan Schulz-Hardt
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Stefan Schulz-Hardt
Gutachter:Prof. Dr. Andreas Mojzisch
Dateien
Name:Druckversion Dissertation Johannes Rollwage.pdf
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Zusammenfassung
Englisch
Accountability is an essential aspect of human judgment and decision-making. Past research has claimed that different forms of accountability have differential effects on the quality of the decisions people make. Specifically, it has been reported that holding people accountable for their decision-making process (process accountability) rather than the outcomes of their decisions (outcome accountability) leads to higher decision quality and reduces cognitive biases. However, recently this claim, which has found entry into multiple influential literature reviews and textbooks, has been called into question by a series of unsuccessful replication attempts. This dissertation provides further evidence that previous findings regarding the beneficial effects of process accountability need to be scrutinized and tested. As in Manuscript 1, my co-authors and I found evidence that a classic finding from the accountability literature, Vieider's (2009) finding that accountability can reduce loss aversion, does not replicate. In Manuscript 2, we also discussed and tested the potential shortcomings of one of the most common experimental paradigms in accountability research that all of the studies that have failed to replicate so far share. In this paradigm, process and outcome accountability are induced by announcing interviews to the study participants. In the two experiments reported in the second manuscript, we found clear evidence that this "interview manipulation" of process and outcome accountability does not reliably produce the psychological effects it is supposed to induce. Therefore, the results reported in this dissertation impose serious limitations on the generalizability of previous findings regarding the effects of process and outcome accountability. While more theoretical and empirical work is needed to clarify how to address these problems regarding the replicability of previous findings of the effects of process and outcome accountability and if there are any more problems with this research, this work identifies important methodological problems within accountability research and discusses potential future directions to solve these problems.
Keywords: process accountability; outcome accountability; replication