Coping with Accountability Cross-Pressures: Low-Effort Evasive Tactics and High-Effort Quests for Complex Compromises

Abstract

The current study explores two classes of strategies of coping with accountability: low-cognitive-effort decision-evasion tactics (buckpassing, procrastination, and exiting the situation) and high-cognitive-effort attempts to craft integratively complex compromises among conflicting perspectives. Some participants read weak arguments on one side of the free trade issue and strong arguments on the other side, and some participants read strong arguments for both the pro-and anti-free trade positions. They then expected their own views to be anonymous or expected to justify those views to a pro-free trade audience or to both a pro-and an anti-free trade audience. Participants were most integratively complex when they read strong arguments from each side and were accountable to conflicting constituencies (maximum intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict). Participants also relied on low-effort decision-evasion tactics to escape accountability and were willing to use escape strategies demanding relatively more time and energy to avoid accountability to contradictory constituencies.