When Numbers Are Better Than Words: The Joint Effects of Response Representation and Experience on Inherent Risk Judgments.
通过两个实验，研究了有经验审计师和无经验学生使用数字或文字表达风险判断时，判断共识和一致性的差异。发现数字表达能提高有经验者的判断共识，但对学生无影响。
Abstract SUMMARY: A major theme of auditing research over the past three decades has been that auditors could improve their judgments by expressing them in numbers instead of words. Evidence suggests that experienced professionals such as practicing auditors develop more complex and complete classifications of domain stimuli than do novices. Experienced auditors' more complete and complex classifications of risk may therefore increase the consensus and consistency of their risk assessments when they express judgments in numbers but not words, because of the greater precision available with numeric risk expressions. In contrast, inexperienced auditors (e.g., students) may lack the knowledge necessary to improve their judgments when using numbers. In addition, because experienced auditors have unique professional experiences, the consensus of their risk judgments should be lower than that of auditing students. To test these predictions, we conducted two experiments which used different methods for establishing equivalencies between numeric and linguistic expressions of risk and for eliciting risk judgments. In the first experiment, participants responded on pre-established scales based upon equivalencies derived from audit practice and training materials. In the second experiment, participants established their own equivalencies and response scales. The results generally supported our predictions. In both experiments, experienced auditors had higher consensus when they expressed risk judgments in numbers relative to words. Experienced auditors also had marginally higher judgment consistency in experiment 1, and significantly higher consistency in experiment 2, when they expressed risk judgments in numbers instead of words. Response representation had no effect on the judgments of auditing students in either experiment. As predicted, auditing students had higher consensus than auditors in both experiments. The results are consistent with previous arguments in the audit...