Machiavellianism, Moral Orientation, Social Desirability Response Bias, and Anti-intellectualism: A Profile of Canadian Accountants

Abstract

Prior research has demonstrated that accountants differ from the general population on many personality traits. Understanding accountants’ personality traits is important when these characteristics may impact professional behavior or ability to work with members of the business community. Our study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical orientation (idealism, relativism), anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias in Canadian accountants. We find that Canadian accountants score much higher on the Machiavellianism scale than U.S. accountants. Additionally, our results show a significant relationship between Machiavellianism and relativism, idealism, anti-intellectualism, and social desirability response bias. Our results indicate that professional Canadian accountants may not share the same personality characteristics as U.S. accountants. We extend previous research investigating Canadian accountants, by explicitly recognizing the impact of social desirability response bias, and by including anti-intellectualism.