RESPONSIBILITY AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT

Responsibility (accountability) is neither a unitary nor well-defined concept in social psychology. It is argued that this is so for two int errelated reasons: (1) The two major approaches, viz., attribution of responsibility and prosocial behavior, are treated separately, (2) the social constitution of responsibility has been theoretically neglecte d. On the basis of this critique, the social structure of responsibili ty is explicated as both being responsible for somebody or something a nd being accountable to someone. The social structure and context of r esponsibility/accountability is exemplified by means of ordinary langu age usage and by recourse to sociological conceptions. The sociality o f responsibility is revealed if social psychologists let themselves be guided by the structure of the question: Who is responsible to whom f or what?