Cognitive accommodation, language, and social responsibility.

The two studies reported here examine cognitive accommodation in a betting situation where a decision-maker perceives that the person for whom he is making judgments has a legitimate right to have an explanation ofthe judgments. In the first study, it was found that under these conditions of personal responsibility, decision-makers' self reports of their judgment policies were highly similar to mathematically-derived descriptions based on their judgments. Seemingly, decision-makers shift to a form of thinking that is analytic and easily described to another person when they believe that they are personally accountable for their judgments. In contrast, persons making judgments for themselves or for someone not having a legitimate reason to question their thinking were significantly less accurate at describing their judgment policies. These decision-makers evidently shift to aform of thinking that is rapid, "intuitive," and dijficult to describe. Results of the second study further support these conclusions by indicating that reportability of judgments by socially accountable decision-makers is seemingly ensured by their use of language-based thinking. That is, when making judgments for which they are accountable, decision-makers seem to be "talking to themselves" as they would to the person for whom the judgments are being made.