The Impact of Accountability on Judgment and Choice: Toward A Social Contingency Model

This chapter advances to a testable middle-range theory predicated on the politician metaphor: the social contingency model of judgment and choice. This model does not map neatly in any of the traditional levels of analysis: the individual, the small group, the organization, and political system. The unit of study is the individual in relation to these social milieux. The model borrows, qualifies, and elaborates on the cognitive miser image of the thinker that has been so influential in experimental work on social cognition. The model adopts the approval and status-seeker image of human nature that has been so influential in role theory, symbolic interactionism, and impression management theory. The model draws on sociological and anthropological theory concerning the necessary conditions for social order in positing accountability to be a universal feature of natural decision environments. The social contingency model is not tightly linked to any particular methodology. The theoretical eclecticism of the model demands a corresponding commitment to methodological eclecticism. The social contingency model poses problems that cross disciplinary boundaries, and that require a plurality of methodologies. The chapter ends with considering the potential problem of proliferating metaphors in social psychological theory.