Introduction

Fundamental research in judgment and decision making has significantly influenced research in several applied fields including medicine, law, public policy, and business. Applied research results increasingly have been put to practical use. One of the disciplines within business that has been heavily influenced is accounting and auditing. Applied judgment research in accounting and auditing has proliferated during the past 20 years, as the importance of descriptive research and the role of experimental methods have been more fully appreciated and more researchers have been trained in core disciplines such as cognitive psychology and Bayesian inference and decision making. During that time, the field has undergone several important shifts in emphasis, and undoubtedly will continue to evolve in the future. It is that evolution that we wish to capture and influence in the chapters of this book.

To set the stage for the chapters that follow, this introductory chapter encompasses three main topics. The first section provides a broad description of both accounting and auditing practice and the evolution of judgment and decision–making research in these fields. The purpose of this section, which is written primarily for readers outside of accounting and auditing, is to provide some perspective on the judgment tasks and research approaches that have attracted accounting and auditing researchers. The next section previews the chapters in this book, all of which provide excellent descriptions of past and current research and extremely thoughtful discussions of future research avenues.