Background factors and the anchoring and adjustment heuristic : an empirical investigation

Abstract

The present study provides additional evidence of the conditions which may lead to the employment of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic in auditor judgment. Ten randomized groups of experienced public accountants provided professional judgements to a case involving an analytical review of supplementary oil data of a crude oil company. The ten groups were provided with case materials that differed in terms of two independent variables: (1) the size of the unreviewed book values of the production (lifting) cost per barrel (bbl) and (2) the direction of the trend in future production (lifting) costs per bbl. Auditor subjects provided their judgmental confidence limits concerning the amount of testing suggested by the case. Based on the book values presented in the case, the amount of testing (i.e., normal, moderate, or extensive) indicated by the subjects' judgmental confidence limits was compared among the ten experimental groups. The findings suggested that both a main effect for book values and an interaction of book values and trend exist for certain book value conditions. It was concluded that (1) trends are used in the setting of judgmental confidence intervals; and (2) the existence of an anchoring bias is conditioned both on the size and direction of the book value from expectations and on the direction of the trend of past data.