Pushing away from representative advice: Advice taking, anchoring, and adjustment

Christina A. Rader, Jack B. Soll and Richard P. Larrick

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2015, vol. 130, issue C, 26-43

Abstract: Five studies compare the effects of forming an independent judgment prior to receiving advice with the effects of receiving advice before forming one’s own opinion. We call these the independent-then-revise sequence and the dependent sequence, respectively. We found that dependent participants adjusted away from advice, leading to fewer estimates close to the advice compared to independent-then-revise participants (Studies 1–5). This “push-away” effect was mediated by confidence in the advice (Study 2), with dependent participants more likely to evaluate advice unfavorably and to search for additional cues than independent-then-revise participants (Study 3). Study 4 tested accuracy under different advice sequences. Study 5 found that classic anchoring paradigms also show the push-away effect for median advice. Overall, the research shows that people adjust from representative (median) advice. The paper concludes by discussing when push-away effects occur in advice taking and anchoring studies and the value of independent distributions for observing these effects.

Keywords: Advice taking; Anchoring; Combining opinions; Judgment; Opinion revision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:130:y:2015:i:c:p:26-43

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.05.004

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