Abstract
Prior audit judgment research indicates that auditors exhibit a preferential attendance to negative evidence in their decision making processes. Using an analysis of variance design in which audit seniors, staff auditors, and auditing students evaluated control risk in the sales/receivables area, a study examines whether experience-related differences play a role in this tendency to focus on negative data. The results indicate that experience plays a primary role in auditor attendance to negative audit evidence but does not affect attendance to positive information. Auditing students and staff auditors were found to attend to more negative evidence than audit seniors. This focus on negative data was further reflected in auditor control risk assessments in that auditing students rated control risk to be higher than audit seniors. The results indicate that the less experience that auditors possess, the more they focus on negative information and the more negative they are in making audit judgments.