Mood and likeability: The impact of two affect types on tax judgment

This study investigates processing influences of two types of affect, general (mood) and targeted (likeability), on professional tax judgment. Tax research has investigated client preference bias, but has not considered the affect's influence. Affect may exacerbate or mitigate this bias, even though affect should be irrelevant to professional judgment. Considerable accounting research, unrelated to tax, supports the importance of understanding affective inputs in professional judgment, primarily because such influence unknowingly leads to irrational economic judgments. Our results indicate that affect impacts tax judgments, and that affect type influences how evidence is processed. Targeted affect influences judgments and evidence evaluation more toward the client preference when the client is likeable rather than dislikeable. Evidence evaluation moderates the impact of likeability on the judgments. Mood also impacts judgments. However, mood influences judgments directly, with no impact on the evaluation of specific evidence cues. Implications are discussed for practice and future research.