Influence of decision maker characteristics on representativeness heuristics bias

• Autor(a) principal: Massa Fernandes, Adriano
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Schnorrenberger, Darci, Rengel, Rodrigo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Ambiente Contábil
• DOI: 10.21680/2176-9036.2020v12n2ID19180
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufrn.br/ambiente/article/view/19180
• topic: Decision making; Heuristics of Representativeness; Bias; Toma de decisiones; Heurística de representatividad; Sesgo; Tomada de decisões; Heurística da Representatividade; Vieses; Tomada de decisão; Contabilidade Comportamental

Purpose: This research aims to verify the influence of demographic characteristics in the presence of the representativity heuristic and its bias in decision making. Methodology: This is a deductive, quantitative and descriptive survey. The sample consists of 93 students of accounting sciences from a federal university in southern Brazil. The percentage of responses and Logistic Regression were used for data analysis. Results: The results indicate that there is balance when analyzing the average of responses, with 49.46% of the responses showing the influence of biases in the representativeness heuristic. In contrast, 50.54% of the cases, rational mechanisms (without bias) supported the decisions. Regarding demographic characteristics, three of the five scenarios presented a significant odds ratio on their influence on the bias decisions of the representativeness heuristic. Among the characteristics, there are the age, gender and semester that the respondent is studying, as the most significant. These results reinforce the importance of paying attention to the presence and use of heuristics and biases when making decisions and the potential consequences, not always pleasant, resulting from them. Contributions of the Study: This contributes to the literature and practice by demonstrating which demographic characteristics most influenced decision making with the presence of cognitive biases.