The Effects of Machiavellianism, Affect and Information processing Styles on Fraudulent Financial Reporting

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of individual and personality traits such as Affects, Machiavellianism, and information processing styles on the tendency to fraudulent financial reporting and, of course, to understand the relationships between Affects, Machiavellianism, and information processing styles. For this purpose, a sample of 250 accountants and financial managers of listed companies was selected and research data were collected through the distribution of the questionnaire. Based on collected data, the research hypotheses were tested via structural equations modeling. The results show that positive Affects have a significant positive and negative relationship with Machiavellianism and rational processing style respectively and negative Affects have positive and negative relationship with Machiavellianism and intuitive processing style, respectively. Machiavellianism has a significant positive relationship with rational processing style and fraudulent financial reporting, and a negative relationship with intuitive processing style. Rational processing style has a significant negative relationship with fraudulent financial reporting, while intuitive processing style has a significant positive relationship with fraudulent financial reporting. In addition, the findings suggest that the relationship between positive affects with intuitive processing style and fraudulent financial reporting and negative affects with rational processing style and fraudulent financial reporting are not significant