 The joint effects of narcissism and psychopathy on accounting students’ attitudes towards unethical professional practicesCharles D. Bailey Journal of Accounting Education, 2019, vol. 49, issue C Abstract: Nonclinical psychopathy and everyday narcissism have received some attention in accounting literature. Both personality traits belong to a constellation of “dark” personality factors that can motivate or allow unethical behaviors. Although both entail callousness and a sense of entitlement, they have relatively distinct characteristics and thus are not highly correlated. Hence, they may contribute jointly and independently to explain or predict behavior. This study extends Bailey (2017) by examining their effects jointly in a national survey of accounting majors and describes the levels in that population. While narcissism is significantly correlated with acceptance of unethical practices, its effect is weaker than psychopathy, and only in the case of nonfinancial narcissistic acts does it explain variance beyond what an individual’s psychopathy explains. Narcissism in accounting majors is among the lowest of any population previously reported. Given that these traits are enduring, the participants are representative of practitioners. Implications for further research are discussed. Keywords: Psychopathy; Narcissism; Dark triad; Ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joaced:v:49:y:2019:i:c:s074857511930079x DOI: 10.1016/j.jaccedu.2019.08.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Accounting Education is currently edited by Natalie Tatiana Churyk More articles in Journal of Accounting Education from Elsevier |
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