Recency And Confirmatory Effect In Audit Judgment

. Recency and confirmatory effect are both a kind of judgment bias, which may lead to a mistake of audit judgment. Different from audit judgment, they also influence audit performance. However, few researches concern it at home. Therefore, based on a going-concern judgment, this paper tested recency and confirmation bias in auditors'judgment.This paper firstly described recency and confirmation bias in belief revision from a psychological perspective, then introduced the belief-adjustment model and its prediction in detail, and finally discussed its application in audit. Based on all above, it using a lab research discussed auditors'belief revision in different response mode. Our results suggest: auditors adjust their belief as the audit evidences updates. The stronger of the audit evidences, the bigger magnitude of belief revision. Additionally, subjects exhibited significant recency and confirmation bias in SbS response mode, which suggest auditors are more sensitive to confirming and late evidences; in comparison, subjects'recency was much weaker in EoS response. The above findings showed that: when implement an audit task, our auditors were sensitive to audit evidence magnitude, inclined to collect and evaluate those evidences that consistent with their hypotheses, and pay more attention to the late information. The results also suggest that our CPAs lack of professional prudent and risk awareness, audit effectiveness may depend on the correctness of their initial hypothesis and excessive sensitivity to late evidences may lead to excessive audit or audit deficiency. So, the paper finally proposed corresponding policy suggestions to reduce confirmation bias and recency in auditors'belief revision.