Abstract
People rely on others' advice to make judgments on a daily basis. In three studies, we examine the differential impacts of similarity between the source of that advice and the person making the judgment in two settings: judging others' behavior and judging one's own actions. We find that similarity interacts with the target of the judgment. In particular, information received from a different advisor is more heavily weighed than from a similar advisor in judging others' actions, but information from a similar advisor is more heavily weighed than from a different advisor in judging one's own. We provide two potential explanations for this interaction, difficulty of the judgment and informativeness of the advice. Our analyses show a moderated mediating role of informativeness and difficulty in the relationship between the advisor's similarity by judgment type interaction and advice use. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 287-302 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes |
| Volume | 108 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2009 |