# Accountability: The Neglected Social Context of Judgment and Choice

*Tetlock · Measurement & Method · Research in Organizational Behavior · 1985 · Paywalled*

An empirical and theoretical paper arguing that accountability — being answerable to an audience for one's judgments — is one of the most powerful and neglected determinants of human thought and behaviour. Tetlock's central finding: when people know who they will be accountable to and can anticipate what that audience expects, they optimise their accounts for that audience rather than for accuracy. Accountability to a known audience with predictable preferences produces performance rather than genuine reflection. The paper has devastating implications for organisational accountability systems: post-incident investigations, performance reviews, and compliance reporting are all structured exactly as Tetlock describes — known audience, predictable expectations, accounts optimised for survival rather than truth. The empirical grounding for the argument that forced accountability degrades the quality of information organisations receive.

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