THE PRIMING EFFECT ON ACCOUNTING FRAUD ASSESSMENT: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH WITH ACCOUNTING SCIENCE STUDENTS

The priming effect is characterized by the improvement of the ability to detect items after a recent experience with them, which can increase people’s attention to moral standards when confronted with questionable behaviors. In this sense, this research aimed to analyze the influence of priming in the judgment of fraudulent situations. For that, an experiment composed of three parts was conducted: (i) identification of the participant's profile; (ii) presentation of a journalistic news item; (iii) evaluation of twelve scenarios of accounting fraud and unethical attitudes. In the evaluation of the cases, we used a Likert-type scale ranging from zero (0) to five (5) relative to the severity of the action and the punishment deserved. Descriptive statistics and the Tukey test – Honest Significant Difference (HSD) were used to analyze the collected data. The sample was composed of 43 students in the first and last period of the Accounting Sciences course at the Federal Rural University of the Semi-arid Region, located in the city of Mossoró-RN. Results demonstrate that there is no influence of priming on the ethical judgment of the students, considering previous knowledge about the subject and students' gender. On the other hand, it was observed that the magnitude of the consequences of fraudulent accounting acts has an impact on the intention to act honestly or not and that there is a proportional relationship between the severity attributed to the action and the punishment deserved by the offender.