Social influence pressures and the risk preferences of aspiring financial market professionals

To better understand the behavior of financial market professionals, in this study, we analyze the risk preferences of aspiring financial market professionals before they enter the financial markets and examine whether these risk preferences are influenced by obedience and conformity pressures. We conducted an experiment involving 131 students and asked them to choose between risky and safe grading options. Observing their change of choices under social influence pressures, we found that obedience pressure significantly influenced their risk choices, but conformity pressure was effective only when the peer information was delivered by an authority figure. Overall, our findings imply that risk preferences are not invariable and can be maneuvered by an authority figure. For practitioners, our findings imply that managers in financial firms can use their power responsibly to discourage excessive risk-taking behavior. For academia, our findings show the importance of training accounting graduates with competencies beyond technical proficiency and with better understanding of the social context in which (ethical) decisions are made.