Does holding decision-makers accountable make them less loss averse? A three-study replication attempt.

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Economics
• Decision Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Accountability is believed to reduce biases in judgment and decision-making.
• Prior research suggested accountability lessens loss aversion, the tendency to feel losses more intensely than equivalent gains.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if process or outcome accountability influences loss aversion.
• To replicate previous findings on the effect of accountability on loss aversion.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted, with the third closely replicating a previous study using an expanded sample size.
• Bayesian analysis was employed to evaluate the evidence for or against the null hypothesis.

Main Results:

• No significant effect of either process or outcome accountability on loss aversion was observed in the initial experiments.
• The direct replication attempt also failed to reproduce the original findings, with substantial evidence supporting the null hypothesis.

Conclusions:

• The link between accountability and reduced loss aversion, as previously reported, could not be established in this research.
• Potential explanations for the replication failure include issues with the loss aversion measurement tool or a lack of a true connection between accountability and loss aversion.