REVISITING THE PROSPECT THEORY: ARE ACCOUNTANTS MORE RATIONALS?

Abstract

The Prospect Theory, psychological theory of decision making developed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, shows that humans are more risk averse in a situation of gains than losses, which those researchers called Framing Effect, dwelling, therefore, the heuristics (beliefs) of the individual catalyst phenomenon. Carvalho Junior (2009) states that the human being is not fully rational decision to make, especially in business environment. Since Miranda et al. (2010) concluded that possess knowledge in accounting help agents make better investment decisions in the presence of sunk costs. From this, we constructed the problem of this research: the formal learning accounting minimizes cognitive biases caused by framing effect on decisions that involve financial risk? We analyzed the responses of 222 subjects, asked to answer three questions, which suggested a financial risk (loss scenario) and a risk-free (gain setting), and a self-assessment of the respondent. The academic backgrounds, and Accounting, focused primarily on business and economics, with education ranging from undergraduate to current holders of the title of Doctor. The collected data were treated statistically using the SPSS software v. 16. Alternative to the main hypothesis of this study were also analyzed three other hypotheses, which evaluated the framing effect might be affected, respectively, by gender, by education or age of the individuals surveyed. Based on these results, it was not possible in any case reject the null hypothesis for each variable "dummy" which leads to the conclusion, considering the sample, none of those variables that significantly influence the behavior of those statistical respondents surveyed.