An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

W Timothy Mitchell
University of Kentucky

Abstract: Business managers frequently call upon accountants to provide advice concerning business decisions. In this paper, I use an experiment with eighty undergraduate business students to investigate existing accountant risk stereotypes and their influence on the persuasiveness of advice they provide. The results indicate that people perceive accountants as more risk averse than sales and marketing people. This influences expectancies regarding the advice each will provide. The results indicate that advice inconsistent with risk stereotypes is more persuasive than advice consistent with risk stereotypes and accountants providing the same advice as sales and marketing people realize different persuasive results.

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