Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to link traditional decision models used to study the loan officers’ decision process and research in the fields of cognitive sciences and psychology. The proposal to be discussed is to integrate emotions as a variable in the decision process. Increasing uncertainty and instability in financial and business environments, combined with the transition to IFRS in Canada, have made the decision process more complex for loan officers and other professional users. Accounting research from the past 15 years highlights that loan officers, despite being professional information users, may be influenced in their judgments and decisions by several variables such as information characteristics, specific functional attributes and personal characteristics, and organizational and situational factors. Without link with the studies in accounting, we founded that Cognitive Fit Theory (CFT), emanating from the cognitive sciences, spotlights factors that influence the judgments and decisions of loan officers. According to this theory, problem-solving quality is enhanced when there is increased correspondence between the mental representation of the problem and the characteristics of the task that must be performed. Mental representation is the product of two factors: the decision maker’s internal representation of the information  and the external representation of the information, which the decision maker uses for the decision process. Studies that identified internal factors have only focussed on functional and cognitive variables (experience, knowledge, and skills), despite the fact that cognitive psychology has long underscored the role of affective factors, including emotions and emotional intelligence. Even though CFT makes it possible to take into account all the decision factors investigated in the literature in relation to loan officers, this theory fails to consider the informational value of the emotions triggered by the decision situation or the emotional skills required to make the correct decision. The addition of this variable to the CFT model, specifically as an explanatory factor in the construction of internal representations, makes it possible to study the decision process of loan officers more comprehensively and realistically.