Advisors want their advice to be used – but not too much: An interpersonal perspective on advice taking

Advisors want their advice to be used – but not too much: An interpersonal perspective on advice taking. Fabian Ache, Christina Rader, Mandy Hütter. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 89, July 2020, 103979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103979

Highlights
• Advisors do not always want advisees to fully adopt their advice
• Advisees weight advice more strongly than advisors want for difficult items
• Both weighting more and less than advisors want causes negative evaluations
• Negative evaluations decrease willingness to give advice again

Abstract: Much advice taking research investigates whether advice weighting accords to normative principles for maximizing decision accuracy. The present research complements this normative perspective with an interpersonal one, arguing that judges should also pay attention to how much their advisors want them to weight advice. In four experiments, we found that advisors do not always want their advice to be adopted fully. Instead, they often give advice about which they are uncertain and therefore want their advice to be averaged with judges' initial opinions or not used at all. Furthermore, advisors' desired advice weighting is often congruent with the judges' actual weighting, but moderators that affect advisor or judge confidence can cause desired and actual weighting to diverge (Experiments 1 and 2). When tasks were difficult, judges put more weight on the advice than advisors desired, because increasing the difficulty of the task led advisors to want their advice weighted less, whereas judges placed more weight on the advice. The reverse was true for easy tasks (Experiment 2). Importantly, both weighting more and less than advisors desired caused advisors to evaluate judges more negatively, which resulted in reduced willingness to give advice again in the future (Experiments 3 and 4), indicating that advisors want their advice used, but not too much.

Keywords: AdviceInterpersonal relationsJudgmentOpinion revisionWisdom of crowds