Judgment and Decision Making Research in Auditing: A Task, Person, and Interpersonal Interaction Perspective

Abstract

This paper discusses judgment and decision making research in auditing—i.e., research that uses a psychological lens to understand, evaluate, and improve judgments, decisions, or choices in an auditing setting. Much of this work uses the laboratory experiment approach, but we also cover related studies that use survey and field study approaches. We classify extant auditing judgment and decision making (JDM) literature as covering three broad areas: (1) the audit task, (2) the auditor and his/her attributes, and (3) interaction between auditor and other stakeholders in task performance. We use this task, person, and interaction categorization to assess the cumulative knowledge generated in the past 25 years, as well as to identify knowledge gaps and opportunities for future research.