THE INFLUENCE OF STEREOTYPES ON THE PERCEPTION OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION BY A RECIPIENT

Abstract

The article examines stereotypes as a social phenomenon and a factor influencing the perception of accounting information by recipients. Individual stereotypes are proved to be often formed under the influence of negative (equally as positive) personal experience of using the accounting information by the decision maker, as well as collective conceptions of the majority of the interested group members: investors, managers, creditors, consumers, public activists, etc.

The individual position of individual recipients, as well as the collective attitude of certain categories of interested parties to the information produced by the accounting system, can both be as a direct consequence of the socio-professional stereotypes for the accountant as a profession and can be considered irrespective of their professional activity. In the latter case conceptual stereotyping is considered, the object of which is the accounting information as a resource of non-material nature.

The formation of stereotypes for accounting information, among other things, are found out to be influenced by intergroup relations and communication. Their understanding is based on the identification of two important properties of these relationships: self-conception of the socio-professional group of accountants (autostereotyping) and the conception of the socio-professional group of accountants about other groups (heterosterotyping).

The article outlines a number of features typical of stereotypes relating to accounting information: conceptual orientation; socio-professional nature; exogeneity of the stereotyping subject; structure heuristics; formation inductance; producibility of impact.

The article considers stereotypes as varieties of the so-called social attitudes and examines them in the relationship of three components, which constitute them: cognitive, affective and behavioural. Since the cognitive component in the structure of the stereotype is usually undeveloped, while the affective is the most stable, there is often a situation, when even understanding the value of accounting information, the decision maker decides to use it precisely because of the unpleasant experience of communicating with the accountant

The article provides a model of interdependence between the level of stereotyping and the perception of accounting information by the recipient in the form of a graph with the definition of three zones: active rejection (information is not useful); critical thinking (information is useful for solving many problems); passive trust (information is useful in any case). The correlation between the coefficient of perception of accounting information and the level of stereotyping in both ranges outside the optimum zone can indicate the existence of problems when making effective decisions by recipients, since both positive and negative stereotypes are more based on emotional and evaluative judgments as opposed to rational. In the case of positive stereotypes, the user may trust the accounting sources too much, use information obtained from them without proper verification and filtering, and negative - ignore the opinion of the accountant, while losing potentially useful and relevant data.