The effect of audit seniors’ decisions on working paper documentation and on partners’ decisions
通过两个实验发现，审计高级人员的先前决策会使其在记录工作底稿时偏向于支持自己决策的证据，而合伙人仅基于这些有偏的记录做出决策时，也会产生同样的偏差。
Prior research reports that the memories of working paper preparers may be biased toward evidence consistent with their prior decisions, but that reviewers exposed to the same set of evidence can mitigate the bias by evaluating inconsistent evidence. This study tests whether audit seniors’ decisions bias their ability to recognize evidence to document in working papers, and whether biased documentation affects the decisions of audit partners who are exposed only to the subset of evidence that seniors recognize and document. Experiment 1 confirms that audit seniors’ prior decisions bias their memories for evidence to document in working papers, and also creates materials for experiment 2. Experiment 2 offers a new insight: when exposed only to the evidence that seniors recognize and document, partners make decisions biased in the direction of the seniors’ decisions, since not all of the inconsistent evidence is documented. Experimental procedures controlled for four alternative interpretations: justification, evidence order, recency, and primacy.