Publication

2005 - Division of Research, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts

Language

English

Word Count

7,500 words, Guess

Page Count

30 pages

Identifiers

Description

Although prior studies have found that people generally underweight advice from others, such discounting of advice is not universal. Two studies examined the impact of task difficulty on the use of advice. In both studies, the strategy participants used to weigh advice varied with task difficulty even when it should have not. In particular, the results show that people overweight advice on difficult tasks and underweight advice on easy tasks. This pattern held regardless of whether advice was automatically provided or whether people had to seek it out. The paper discusses implications for the circumstances under which people will be open to influence by advisors.

Subjects

Series Statement

  • Working paper / Division of Research, Harvard Business School -- 06-019

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