Summer Reading: The Righteous Mind IV: Accountability

One section of Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012) is entitled "We Are All Intuitive Politicians." The section begins with a recognition of the centrality of accountability not just in government, but in all our relations with people. "Human beings," he says, "are the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by creating systems of formal and informal accountability. We're really good at holding others accountable for their actions, and we're really skilled at navigating through a world in which others will hold us accountable for our own. … We act like intuitive politicians striving to maintain appealing moral identities in front of our multiple constituencies."

To succeed socially, we need to create and maintain an appealing moral identity. And this means that appearance is more important than reality. However, we expect others' moral identity to be real, and we are angry when it turns out not to be, just as with actual politicians.

The other important thing that Haidt notes in this section is that, "when people know in advance that they'll have to explain themselves, they think more systematically and self-critically. They are less likely to jump to premature conclusions and more likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence." In other words, when people truly feel they will be held accountable for their words and actions, they act more reasonable, honest, and responsible. This is why the participation of informed citizens in local government is so important, and why it is the principal indirect goal of local government ethics.

This can be more clearly seen in the results of Phil Tetlock's research into accountability, which Haidt cites. Tetlock found two kinds of careful reasoning:  exploratory thought, which considers alternative points of view in an evenhanded way; and confirmatory thought, which rationalizes a particular point of view. Tetlock's studies used situations where there was no self-interest, strong emotions, or politicians involved. As Haidt says, "what chance is there that people will think in an open-minded, exploratory way when self-interest, social identity, and strong emotions make them want or even need to reach a preordained conclusion?"

Tetlock found that accountability increases exploratory thought, which we say we want from our government officials, only when three conditions exist:

Before forming an opinion, the official learned that she would be held accountable to an audience.
The audience's views are unknown.
The official believes the audience is well informed and interested in accuracy.

The problem is that all three conditions are rarely met, so rarely that many people are not very good at exploratory thought, no better than they are at sports they rarely play. What government officials need is practice. But most people don't like to practice. They need a coach to get them out on the court or the driving range. Officials have the public, but rarely does the public get to engage directly with officials in a public forum. They can speak, but it's easy to ignore them or twist what they say to make them look wrong. Citizens can sometimes ask a question, but they rarely can follow it up with questions, at least not enough to force an official out of her comfort zone. So even if the audience is knowledgeable and interested in accuracy, it's hard to ensure it.

Ensuring accuracy requires not only well-informed and active citizens, but procedures that allow them to truly hold officials accountable. This includes timely transparency, that is, knowledge of the officials' positions and arguments well before a public hearing, so citizens can prepare. Even better would be the ability of at least civic organizations to ask questions and get answers in advance, so that they are on something close to an equal footing at a public hearing.

This is a lot of work, but since everyone agrees that accountability is an essential part of governing, what's wrong with accountability being a lot of work? The problem is that people don't agree on what accountability means. I agree much more with Tetlock and Haidt than I do with the most common position taken by elected local officials:  we are held accountable every election.

That sort of accountability does not require any of the three conditions:  the audience's views are known through polling, the official knows the audience is poorly informed, and accuracy is only one of dozens of issues. In fact, an election cannot hold an official accountable for any single position, action, or inaction, unless one is so repellent to a majority of the minority of people who bother to vote in local elections, that it leads them to want to throw the bastard out (and even still, the opponent might be seen as more of a bastard).

And as we all know, more misinformation is spread by officials during elections than any other time, and this is because they know they won't be held accountable for it. If elections held officials accountable for what they say, election campaigns would be nothing like they are.

In a government ethics context, the three conditions of accountability can be met when officials are required to seek ethics advice if they have a special relationship with anyone involved in a particular matter that is going to come before them. The official will know that the ethics officer is well informed and interested in accuracy, and the official will not know how the ethics officer will respond (although he may falsely assume that the ethics officer will tell the official to withdraw from the matter). And since the official is obliged to follow the advice, he will effectively be held accountable, no matter what his feelings or arguments are.

But what usually happens when an official is faced with a conflict situation is that the official need say nothing to anyone. When he does choose to seek advice, he seeks it from the city or county attorney, who is generally not well informed about government ethics and is usually interested not in accuracy, but rather in interpreting an ethics law in such a way that the official can participate, if that is what the official wants to do. In addition, there is no one to hold the city or county attorney accountable for poor, or even wrong, ethics advice. And the official can say he followed the advice he was given. Therefore, there is no accountability at all.

Continue with the next post on this book.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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