The impact of advice uncertainty and individual regulatory modes on advice taking

Abstract

In previous research on advice taking, researchers have mainly focused on certain types of advice. However, in practice, when people give advice to others, there is often a degree of uncertainty (e.g. I think that the distance between Beijing and Shanghai is between 800 and 1200 km). To date, only a few studies have examined the impact of uncertain advice on advice taking. Through two studies, the present research explores the influence of advice uncertainty and individuals’ regulatory mode predominance on advice taking and the mediating mechanism. In Study 1, the participants' chronic regulatory mode was measured by a questionnaire, and in Study 2, we induced the predominance of the participants’ situational regulatory mode using a recall task. We found that people are more likely to adopt advice with low uncertainty. The moderating effect of participants' regulatory mode on the impact of advice uncertainty on advice taking occurs only when the regulatory mode is induced by the situation. For the assessment-predominant group, there was a significant difference between the no-uncertainty group and the high-uncertainty group, while for the locomotion-predominant group, this difference was not significant. Additionally, our study revealed the mediating role of advice reliability, which existed only when the participants were able to compare low- and no-uncertainty advice in a within-participant design. That is, when decision makers adopt uncertainty advice within ranges, they not only consider reliability but also weigh multiple factors. Our findings contribute to understanding the mechanisms underlying individuals' preferences for uncertain advice and reasoning about individual differences.