Why Accountability Helps For Nearly Everything We Do

Accountability changes the effort we put into something before anyone even checks the progress or quality of our work. Our brain treats being watched or the expectation that we’ll have to explain ourselves later as a reason to value our task more and work harder at it. The effects kick in when we know others are watching or even just thinking that our work will be seen by someone else.

Accountability is one of the few things that seems, when done the right way, to help with almost anything. We can use it to finish a project, stick to training, save money, show up to an early meeting, keep a recovery practice alive, etc. When we tell someone what we intend to do or we put ourselves somewhere we can be seen doing it, the work gets easier to start and harder to abandon. If accountability was about the goal/task itself, the impacts would fluctuate more depending on what we’re doing, but its effects are fairly constant regardless of what it is we’re being accounted for.

How Do We Define Accountability?

Accountability is sometimes seen as a form of pressure applied from the outside. Maybe the thought is that if we were left alone to complete a task, we’d drift or never finish it, so we hand someone the job of checking on us, and the fear of letting them down forces the behavior we couldn't manage on our own.

That picture isn't necessarily wrong, but it misses a mechanism underneath why accountability can help us so much. The pressure is a piece most of us have likely felt, but it isn't the part doing most of the work, and it doesn't explain why accountability transfers so cleanly between completely unrelated tasks or goals. Something more general is going on, and it starts well before anyone is watching or actually checks on us.

Accountability Helps and Starts Working Immediately

Accountability starts working before anyone else is involved. Simply expecting that we'll have to explain a decision later, or will be judged for a decision we make, changes how we make that decision in the moment. Decades of research describe the same pattern in that when we anticipate having to answer to someone, we think more carefully and weigh more options than we would otherwise. 

An example all of us have probably experienced is the difference between writing a note that is only for us to see vs writing something another person will read; the second pulls a sharper version of the same thought out of us before a single word has actually been seen by anyone else. How accountability helps here is just the expectation that we'll have to account for ourselves to another person. What matters is what that expectation acts on. It doesn't have to do with the content of the task, whether that’s choosing an investment or deciding whether to skip a run, the anticipated audience causes the same shift toward effort and attention. Our system responds to the prospect of being seen, not to the thing we happen to be seen doing.

Why Being Watched Makes the Work Feel More Important

Being watched changes how much our brain values doing a task well. When we know an audience is present, or will be, the thinking and reward regions of our mind activate as well as the area involved in converting wanting something into doing something about it. The practical result is that performing well starts to feel more rewarding than it did a moment earlier, for no reason other than the expectation that we’re being watched or will be judged. A 2018 study found that people performed a trained skill an average of 5 percent better, and as much as 20 percent better, when an audience was watching. We might notice it as a small, almost involuntary lift, like the kind that gets us to run the extra interval or read the paragraph one more time before sending it.

The trigger that starts this cascade can be incredibly simple. In another interesting experiment, people were asked to drop cash donations in a box. Participants contributed nearly three times as much when a photograph of eyes was posted above the box rather than a neutral image. Nobody was actually watching, but the picture was enough to trigger peoples’ sense of being seen, which tells us how little our brain needs in order to start treating a moment as one that counts.

The Dark Side of Accountability

Practical accountability tools function almost identically under the hood despite looking different on the surface. Telling a friend the plan, posting a goal publicly, hiring a coach, signing a commitment contract that costs us money if we quit, etc. all have nearly the same effect. Each one installs an anticipated audience and lets the same machinery run. A standing call with a training partner does the same work as a public progress tracker; the shape it takes differs, but both put a witness on the other side of our goal. 

In one randomized study, dieters whose name and weight-loss goal were posted on a public board at their gym reached about exceeded their weight goal by 2% after sixteen weeks, while those who kept the same goal private fell short of their goal by 11%. The gap between the two groups was still there two months later. How many people actually look at those gym boards? It doesn’t matter. Posting the goals changed what the goal was worth by making it something other people could see them hit or miss.

While the benefits are measurable, accountability can work the opposite direction too. Being watched raises the stakes our brain assigns to what we’re doing, and raised stakes can sharpen some tasks while rattling others. How we respond to being watched is largely a combination of how we frame the situation; accountability helps if we convert it into fuel to perform at our best, but it hurts if we focus on the consequences of not performing our best. 

Accountability doesn't add ability…it adds weight, and weight helps right up until it's the wrong kind.

References

1. Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology Letters, 2(3), 412–414. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2006.0509

2. Chib, V. S., Adachi, R., & O'Doherty, J. P. (2018). Neural substrates of social facilitation effects on incentive-based performance. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(4), 391–403. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsy024

3. Giné, X., Karlan, D., & Zinman, J. (2010). Put your money where your butt is: A commitment contract for smoking cessation. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2(4), 213–235. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.2.4.213

4. Lerner, J. S., & Tetlock, P. E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125(2), 255–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.255

5. Yoshie, M., Nagai, Y., Critchley, H. D., & Harrison, N. A. (2016). Why I tense up when you watch me: Inferior parietal cortex mediates an audience's influence on motor performance. Scientific Reports, 6, 19305. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep19305