The Relationship between Antisocial Personality Disorder and the Tendency towards Unethical Behaviors in Accounting Students

Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is a behavior generally defined by the lack of conscience and it would increase fraudulent and unethical activities. Hence, the personality of people, especially APD, affects committing crime and unethical-economic behaviors. This research is an applied and descriptive-correlational study and its statistical population consists of accounting students of different universities in Iran. The sample involves 136 people selected through convenience sampling. This study was conducted during the academic year of 2018. To measure the variables a standard Bailey questionnaire was used and to test the hypotheses confirmatory factor analysis as well as the structural equations modeling were administered.  The results show that level of APD in students is greater than the average. Also, there is a positive and significant (P=0.55) relationship between APD and tendency towards unethical behaviors. If APD increases, the probability of incidence of unethical behaviors in accounting students will be boosted. Further, a higher level of APD in accounting students indicates to decrease this disorder a precise and comprehensive planning is required so that its negative consequences would be prevented. And the profession quality can be guaranteed by teaching students theoretically, practically and psychologically consistent with accounting and auditing workplaces.