The Effect of Intuitive Advice Justification on Advice Taking

How do you respond when receiving advice from somebody with the argumentation “my gut tells me so” or “this is what my intuition says”? Most likely, you would find this justification insufficient and disregard the advice. Are there also situations where people do appreciate such intuitive advice and change their opinion accordingly? A growing number of authors write about the power of intuition in solving problems, showing that intuitively made decisions can be of higher quality than decisions based on analytical reasoning. We want to know if decision makers, when receiving advice based on an intuitive cognitive process, also recognize the value of such advice. Is advice justified by intuition necessarily followed to a lesser extent than an advice justified by analysis? Furthermore, what are the important factors influencing the effect of intuitive justification on advice taking? Participants across three studies show that utilization of intuitive advice varies depending on advisor seniority and type of task for which the advice is given. Summarizing, the results suggest that decision makers a priori doubt the value of intuitive advice and only assess it as accurate if other cues in the advice setting corroborate this. Intuitively justified advice is utilized more if it comes from a senior advisor. In decision tasks with experiential products, intuitively justified advice can even have more impact than analytically justified advice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotions in Advice Taking: The Roles of Agency and Valence

Recently, advice taking has received attention in decision‐making research, and some studies suggest that emotions may play a role in this process. Yet a clear account of how emotions influence advice taking is lacking. The current research introduces a parsimonious explanation by suggesting that such effects can be predicted on the basis of two emotion dimensions: valence (positivity or negativity) and agency (self‐focused versus other‐focused). In five experiments with different emotion inductions and different measures for advice taking, the effects of positive emotions such as gratitude and pride and of negative emotions such as anger and shame on advice taking were studied. The findings reveal that emotion valence and agency exert an influence on advice taking and that this interaction effect is mediated by the perceived ability of the advisor. Together, these findings provide a unique theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of emotions in advice taking. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Some People Heed Advice Less than Others: Agency (but Not Communion) Predicts Advice Taking

Across three studies (total N = 793), we investigated the link between two fundamental dimensions of personality, agency and communion, and advice taking in quantity estimation tasks. We complemented the analyses of the individual studies with meta‐analyses across all three studies in order to gain insight into the robustness of our core results. In line with our expectations, agency was associated with less advice taking, and this effect was mediated by individuals' perceptions of their own competence. Contrary to what we expected, we did not find consistent evidence that communion systematically relates to advice taking. Analyses of judges' initial accuracy further suggested that agentic judges' lower willingness to heed advice was justified by greater initial accuracy as compared with their less agentic peers. Our data, thus, provide evidence of individual differences in advice taking and shed some light on the question which individuals are more inclined to heed advice than others. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gift Giving at Israeli Weddings as a Function of Genetic Relatedness and Kinship Certainty

This study examines gift giving at Israeli weddings. In accordance with kin selection theory, we hypothesized that wedding guests possessing greater genetic relatedness to the newlyweds would offer greater sums of money as wedding gifts. We also hypothesized that family members stemming from the maternal side (where the genetic lineage has higher kinship certainty) would offer the newlyweds more money than those stemming from the paternal side. Data on the monetary gift sums of the wedding guests from 30 weddings were collapsed according to two criteria: (a) genetic relatedness (0%, 6.25%, 12.5%, 25%, and 50%) and (b) kinship certainty (maternal or paternal lineage). Both hypotheses were supported. We discuss the implications of these data in understanding family dynamics, as well as practical applications associated with the marketing of gifts.     

Not all gifts are good: The potential practical costs of motivated gifts

People rely on support from others to accomplish mundane and momentous tasks. When asking for assistance, is it beneficial to incentivize a helper by offering a motivated gift (i.e., a gift with the hope of getting support in return)? Six studies (N > 2,500) examine the frequency and potential costs of motivated gifts. In Study 1, a third of Americans indicated that they had given a motivated gift at least once, while nearly two‐thirds believed they had received one. In Studies 2a–d, most participants who imagined receiving a motivated gift before a favor request reported lower willingness to help and anticipated satisfaction from helping than participants who imagined simply being asked for a favor. Finally, Study 3 replicates these findings with actual help provided among friends in a laboratory setting. Findings suggest that motivated gifts are relatively common but may sometimes undermine the assistance that people hope to receive.     

Metacognitive myopia and the overutilization of misleading advice

Previous research on advice taking has explained the failure to exploit collective wisdom in terms of the egocentric underweighting of advice provided by independent others. The present research is concerned with an opposite and more radical source of irrational advice taking, namely, the failure to critically assess the validity of advice due to metacognitive myopia. Participants could use the advice of one or two experts when estimating health risks. They read sketches of the study samples that experts had drawn to estimate conditional probabilities (e.g., of HIV‐given drug addiction). Whether samples were valid or seriously biased, subsequent judgments were strongly affected by any advice (Experiment 1). Uncritical reliance on any advice persisted when participants were sensitized to the contrast of valid and invalid advice in a repeated measures design (Experiment 2), when participants themselves believed advice not to be valid (Experiment 3), and even after full debriefing about invalid advice (Experiment 4). Lay advice exerted a similar influence as expert advice (Experiment 5). Although these provocative results are independent of numeracy and consensus (Experiment 6), they highlight the impact of metacognitive myopia as an impediment of social rationality.     

建议采纳的认知机制

决策者的认知特点, 以及决策过程中建议者,任务特征,环境因素等都会影响决策者的认知加工, 并最终影响建议采纳.目前建议采纳过程中的认知研究主要集中于决策者方面, 本文通过总结以往研究, 从决策者的认知风格,社会认知复杂性,认知策略以及情绪对认知的影响等四个方面, 系统阐述了认知对建议采纳的影响.同时, 结合态度改变理论,解释水平理论,具身认知理论以及认知失调理论等进一步讨论了建议采纳的认知发生机制, 并在此基础上初步构建了建议采纳认知机制模型.未来研究可进一步探讨决策者的认知灵活性,认知闭合需要等对建议采纳的影响, 以及建议提出的认知机制, 以丰富建议采纳领域研究.     

Ridwan’s conversion: kandoeri giving,moral personhood,and the re-imagining of communal difference in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article brings religious conversion and religious giving under one analytic lens in examining how ‘Ridwan’, a Chinese–Indonesian convert to Islam from the Indonesian province of Aceh, describes the process through which he became a Muslim. Ridwan frames his account of conversion in terms of religious giving, with special reference to Acehnese ritual feasts known as kandoeri. He draws attention to the way kandoeri giving constitutes a mode of relationality, in which careful attention to difference is the basis for reciprocity. His approach rests on what the anthropological theorist of The Gift, Marcel Mauss, identified as ‘moral persons’, a category that contrasts with liberal ideas of the self and identity. It reflects an awareness of the dual nature of exchange partners, who are always potentially both enemy and friend. This subtly challenges prevailing Indonesian understandings of intercommunal, especially interreligious, relations as well as common perceptions of Chinese–Indonesian religiosity and belonging.