The impact of emotional intelligence on auditor judgment

This study seeks to identify emotional intelligence (EI) as a key factor in dealing with emotions and pressures in an audit context. In this paper, we focus on how EI may influence the relation between job pressures (i.e., time budget pressure and client pressure) and auditors' judgment. Specifically, we investigate the moderating effect of EI on auditors' third‐person assessments of an auditor's actions when subject to internal and external pressures. The results suggest that the moderating influence of EI can effectively reduce auditors' tendency to engage in dysfunctional behavior and improve audit quality. Further, moderation analysis suggests that EI is a significant mechanism that moderates the effects of different types of pressure on auditors' judgments.