Motivated Advice Seeking: Are Advice Seekers Trying to Be More Accurate?

Abstract

Prior research has assumed that people seek advice to improve their decisions. Across five studies, we find evidence that people often seek advice to validate their preferred choice rather than improve the quality of their decisions. Instead of seeking objective, unbiased advice, advice seekers engage in behaviors to obtain preference-congruent advice. They choose advisors who they think are more likely to recommend their preferred option, and they frame their advice requests in ways that favor their preferred choice. We find that the motivated way in which advice seekers ask for advice often elicits preference-congruent advice. We also find that advice seekers judge preference-congruent advice to be more useful, and that receiving preferencecongruent advice boosts their confidence and satisfaction. In contrast to the prevailing view of advice seeking as an impartial process aimed at improving accuracy, we assert that, in practice, advice seeking is a motivated process driven by the desire to obtain preference-congruent recommendations.

Keywords: Advice, Advice Seeking, Decision Making, Judgment