Defensive Bolstering

Defensive Bolstering

There is a fine line between types of accountability that trigger self-critical thought and types of accountability that trigger self-justifying trains of thought. The model discussed here predicts self-justifying thinking when decision makers are accountable to a skeptical or even hostile audience for actions that it is now impossible to reverse and implausible to deny.

Tetlock et al. (1989) demonstrated how a seemingly minor variation in the timing of an accountability manipulation can determine whether we observe preemptive self-criticism or the mirror-image coping strategy of defensive bolstering. Participants in this study reported their thoughts on four controversial issues either before or after they had committed themselves to stands. Some subjects believed that their stands were private; others believed that they would later justify their views to an audience with unknown, liberal, or conservative views. Accountable participants who reported their thoughts after making commitments became markedly less tolerant of dissonant arguments than were three other groups: unaccountable participants who reported their thoughts after making commitments and both unaccountable and accountable participants who reported their thoughts prior to taking a stand. Once people had publicly committed themselves to a position, a major function of thought became generating justifications for those positions. As a result, the integrative complexity of thoughts plunged (subjects were less likely to concede legitimacy to other points of view) and the number of pro-attitudinal thoughts increased (subjects generated more reasons why they were right and would-be critics were wrong).