Investigating the Effects of Psychological Distance on Judgment and Decision Making in Accounting

This research investigates the effects of psychological distance on judgment and decision making in accounting. Construal level theory of psychological distance, a framework recently developed in the field of social psychology, constitutes the theoretical foundation for this study. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of spatial distance and risk category on risk managers’ probability assessment regarding the occurrence of different risk factors. The statistical population of the research is the corporate risk managers and the domain of the time of research is 1396. Chi-square, covariance analysis and multiple regression models were used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. The results show that spatial distance influences decision makers' judgment about the possibility of realizing different risk factors. As anticipated, results show that risk managers who evaluate a spatially remote risk target judge the probability that various risk factors will materialize to be lower than their counterparts who evaluate a spatially proximate risk target. Furthermore, no support is found for the prediction that risk managers perceive operational risk factors as more likely to occur than non-operational risk factors. Overall, the results of this study show that psychological distance and level of abstraction resulting from it systematically affects judgments and evaluations of organizational decision makers (accountants and managers).
Thus, the present research identifies the psychological distance as a potential source of decision-making orientation during the risk assessment process. Therefore, decision makers should pay attention to the critical role of mental interpretation in individual judgment and decision making.