The Dilution Effect and Time Pressure in Ethical Decision Making Abstract Decision making research has identified various circumstances that lead to suboptimal decisions. One such circumstance is the mixture of unimportant with important information.
People make decisions that are less extreme when presented with such a mixture of evidence.
This is known as the dilution effect. Accounting researchers have also documented the dilution effect. The accounting profession's Code of Professional Conduct requires accountants to exhibit high levels of ethical behavior. In light of litigation in the 1980's and 1990's that often questioned the ethical behavior of corporate accountants and their auditors, researchers have begun revisiting accountants' ethical profiles. This research genre has only recently begun to study how these characteristics translate, if at all, to accountants' behaviors or the causal factors that influence ethical behaviors.