Accountability in Decision-Making
Accountability means being willing or obliged to explain your beliefs and decisions to others. Duke describes how a group that rewards accuracy can help members question their confidence and follow rules they set before emotions run high.
THE IDEA
“One Hundred White Castles . . . and a large chocolate shake”: how accountability improves decision-making
David Grey is a high-stakes poker player and professional gambler, and a good friend. After a night at a racetrack and a bowling alley in New Jersey, David and a bunch of other bettors were hungry. It was late. Someone suggested White Castle. A discussion broke out about how many burgers the biggest eater in the group, Ira the Whale, could eat.
When they got Ira the Whale to say he could eat 100 burgers (remember, White Castle burgers are small), most of the group, not surprisingly, wanted to bet against him. David was an exception. “I was a young guy, just getting started. Fifty dollars was a big win or loss for me. There was about $2,000 out against Ira the Whale. I bet $200 on him because I thought he could do it.”
When they got to White Castle, Ira the Whale decided to order the burgers twenty at a time. David knew he was a lock to win as soon as Ira the Whale ordered the first twenty, because Ira the Whale also ordered a milkshake and fries.
After finishing the 100 burgers and after he and David collected their bets, Ira the Whale ordered another twenty burgers to go, “for Mrs. Whale.”
Accountability is a willingness or obligation to answer for our actions or beliefs to others. A bet is a form of accountability. If we’re in love with our own opinions, it can cost us in a bet. Ira the Whale held the other gamblers accountable for their beliefs about whether he could eat 100 White Castle burgers. After spending time in that kind of environment, you become hypervigilant about your level of confidence in your beliefs. No one is forced to make or take such bets, but the prospect is a reminder that you can always be held accountable for the accuracy of what you believe and say. It is truly putting your money where your mouth is.
Being in an environment where the challenge of a bet is always looming works to reduce motivated reasoning. Such an environment changes the frame through which we view disconfirming information, reinforcing the frame change that our truthseeking group rewards. Evidence that might contradict a belief we hold is no longer viewed through as hurtful a frame. Rather, it is viewed as helpful because it can improve our chances of making a better bet. And winning a bet triggers a reinforcing positive update.
Accountability, like reinforcement of accuracy, also improves our decision-making and information processing when we are away from the group because we know in advance that we will have to answer to the group for our decisions. Early in my poker career, my poker group recommended that a way to avoid the effects of self-serving bias when I was losing was to have a preset “loss limit”—if I lost $600 at the stakes I was playing, I would leave the game. The smart, experienced players advising me knew that in the moment of losing, I might not be my most rational self in assessing whether I was losing because I was getting unlucky or losing because I was playing poorly. A predetermined loss limit acts as a check against irrationally chasing losses, but self-enforcement is a problem. If you have more money in your pocket, you might still take it out. If you’re out of money, casinos have ATMs and machines that let you get cash advances on your credit cards. Poker players are also pretty liberal about lending money to losing players.
I was much less likely to break a loss limit because I knew I was accountable to my pod. If I reached my loss limit and my inner voice said, “This game is so good that I should put up more money and keep playing,” it also reminded me I’d have to answer for the decision to a group of players I respected. Accountability made me run that conversation in my head, in which I started explaining how I was just getting unlucky and they would expose why I was likely biased in my assessment, helping me resist the urge to buy more chips. And, after leaving a losing game and going home, I could offset some of the sting of losing by running the conversation where my pod would approve of my decision to quit the game when I told them about it.
Imagining how the discussion will go helps us to spot more errors on our own and catch them more quickly.
When to use it
When making financial investments, share your rationale with a trusted advisor or group to reduce overconfidence and motivated reasoning.
In a strategy meeting, ask proposal authors to explain their evidence, uncertainties, and reasons for rejecting alternatives. Reward candid revisions as well as well-supported recommendations.
Set personal rules (e.g., loss limits in gambling or trading) and pair them with a commitment to report outcomes to a peer group for accountability.
When evaluating a controversial opinion, mentally simulate being held to account by a truthseeking group to check your own certainty.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Betting on Ira the Whale
David Grey bet $200 that Ira the Whale could eat 100 White Castle burgers. Ira did, and the other bettors had to pay. The story makes confidence costly: each bettor had to commit to a prediction rather than offer an opinion without consequences.
Using a Loss Limit with a Pod
A poker player sets a pre-determined loss limit (e.g., $600) and is accountable to a group of trusted players. When tempted to continue losing, the player imagines explaining the decision to the pod, which helps resist the urge to chase losses. The accountability makes self-enforcement more effective.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you introduce accountability into your personal or professional decision-making to reduce bias?
Recall a time you held a strong belief that was later proven wrong. How would a bet or external accountability have changed your confidence or information-seeking?
Imagine you must justify a major decision to a respected group. How does anticipating that conversation affect your reasoning process?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Thinking in Bets Making Smarter Decisions When You Dont Have All the Facts (Annie Duke)