Accountability Hacks Our Instinct To Survive

When it comes to behavior change, there are few things more effective than accountability. There’s something deeply powerful about knowing someone else is expecting something of you, that they’re counting on you, and it causes you to take action in ways you wouldn’t have the motivation to do yourself. The opportunity is to be intentional about how you leverage accountability in your life to help you be more consistent in doing the things that most serve you.

Perhaps a quick lesson on the psychology behind why accountability works will give you the understanding you need to incorporate it in your life.

Our brains are optimized to do one thing - keep us alive. This is an instinct we were all born with, passed down through generations as part of our evolution as a species. One of the components to staying alive, particularly in prehistoric days (which is largely what our brains are still designed for), is that it was safer for us as humans to live in groups. This offered protection, extra hands to raise young, an ability to share resources, and other survival advantages. 

Psychologically, this caused humans to develop a deep need of acceptance and belonging. Those who had that need were more likely to engage in collaborative, altruistic, prosocial behaviors that maintained their status of being a contributing member to the group. If you weren’t helping, then you were more likely to be outcasted and have to fend for yourself.

In today’s world we have this same psychological need to belong engrained into our brains. We are the modern product of our species’ evolutionary history. And that means, when someone is counting on you for something, you feel compelled to follow through on it so that you don’t let them down. You fear that you’ll be removed from the tribe.

Accountability is our way of hacking this evolutionary instinct to survive and using it for growth. Especially when it comes to the healthy, productive actions we know we should be taking to feel, perform and be at our best... The reason we don’t do these things naturally is because they’re not essential for our survival in the short-term, and therefore become deprioritized by the brain. 

But, when those behaviors become essential survival behaviors, because they’re connected to maintaining good standing within your group, then you feel a more natural motivation to do it. And it’s by having accountability that you establish this connection and get your brain to start working for you.

If you want to learn more about how to implement accountability, check out this past podcast episode about How To Make Accountability Work For You.