| The author studied the effect of accountability, primacy, and racial cues on two dependent variables. One dependent measure was the degree of integrative complexity of responses; the other was the number of cultural concepts identified by the subjects in the written responses. Accountability and primacy have both received support in social psychology literature as possible methods of intervention that may permit individuals to approach information processing in a more complex and conscious manner. Subjects provided written responses to one of two counseling videos that varied on client race (i.e., African American and Caucasian). The dependent variable culture was eliminated from the analysis due to very limited responses. Response length was included as an independent variable in the regression analysis due to correlation size and accounted variance in relation to complexity scores. The independent variables race, unknown accountability, known accountability, and response length contributed significantly to the regression analysis for the dependent variable complexity. The regression model accounted for 28% of the variance in complexity scores with response length accounting for 8.9%, unknown accountability 8.3%, race 7.0%, and known accountability 3.8%. Complexity scores were significantly differently for race of client, where the Caucasian client video received higher complexity scores than the African American client video. Unknown accountability was significantly different from the no accountability condition. The accountability results mirrored previous social cognitive research with highest scores for unknown and known, lowest for no accountability, and the only significant difference between unknown and no accountability. |
