How to Ask for Advice (and Why Many Ask Incorrectly)

Source: WikiHow

When we ask for advice from others, we would like their independent opinion.  In other words, we would benefit a great deal if we did not influence their response.  However, many of us frame our question or request in a way that does bias the advice we receive.  

Jessica Reif, Richard Larrick, Jack Soll have published a new paper titled "The inclusion of anchors when seeking advice: Causes and consequences." They write, "Sometimes advice seekers include their own thinking in their requests for advice, providing anchors that make it difficult for their advisors to access their own independent judgments."  For example, you might ask a colleague: How many people should I interview for an open analyst position on my team?  Alternatively, you might ask: Do you think that interviewing five people is appropriate when searching for a new analyst for my team?  In the second case, you have anchored the other party by providing a number to them.  In the first case, the more open-ended request for advice improves the chances of receiving an unbiased perspective.  

It seems obvious, right?  Don't anchor others when seeking advice. Yet, many of us do just that. Why?  The authors find that people who worry about appearing competent and/or diligent are more likely to anchor others when soliciting advice.  In other words, we often worry about the impression that we are making.  Asking a completely open-ended question makes some us feel as they though we may seem clueless to the other party.  

How does one signal competence without anchoring the other party (i.e., while preserving the independence of the other party's advice)?  Feif, Larrick, and Soll demonstrate that one can do so by using a "preparation signal."  They offer an example: “I have calculated what I think is reasonable but am interested in hearing what you think."  In short, let the other party know that you have done some research and come to your own conclusion, but you do not wish to disclose because you want their unbiased advice.  In one of their studies, they tested the usefulness of such a signal.  They concluded, "The key insight is that a preparation signal– an indication that the advice seeker made an estimate prior to the interaction but is withholding it– may be similarly effective in accomplishing impression management objectives without introducing potentially biasing information into the advice interaction. This finding is important because it offers advice seekers a strategy for simultaneously accomplishing impression management and independence goals."

Women Rise to Executive Ranks More Often in Decentralized Organizations

Does organizational structure affect the likelihood that women will climb to C-suite positions?  Indeed, it seems that structure has a substantial impact.  Women tend to do better in decentralized organizations.  That finding emerges from new research by Tingyu Du and Ulya Tsolmon.   They assembled a dataset of over 15,200 companies with nearly 600,000 managers.  The scholars state that, "Our findings suggest that decentralized organizational structure seems more conducive to reducing the gender gap than centralized structures." 

The scholars explain their finding by focusing on the skills that are needed in centralized vs. decentralized organizations, as well as the differences in the way that performance is measured and evaluated. The scholars argue that decentralized firms with leaders of separate units, each with their own P&L, tend to have clearer performance metrics than managers in highly centralized firms. The scholars conclude, "“In decentralized organizations, managers often have clearer accountability for their units’ performance, making their achievements more recognizable both internally and externally." Women achieve promotions in those firms based on their abilities without confronting as much bias.  In the firms with a high degree of power centralization, performance is often harder to measure, and social networks, political capital, and relationships play a much larger role in the promotion process. Bias may be more prevalent in that setting, thereby limiting the likelihood that women will rise to the C-suite.

I'm struck by this finding because it makes sense intuitively, and I'm also intrigued because I don't think people have considered this relationship between structure and female advancement in the past. It seems that these scholars have discovered one more very important reason for reducing power centralization in organizations.

Failing to Change When Faced With Negative News

Source:  Flickr

I recently read about a new study by Bradley R. Staats and his co-authors titled “Maintaining Beliefs in the Face of Negative News: The Moderating Role of Experience” in Management Science.  They set out to study how decision-makers react when faced with negative news.  The scholars chose to look at how expertise affects our likelihood to adjust our behavior in light of new negative information.  They assembled an interesting database about cardiac stent use in Pennsylvania from 2003-08 involving nearly 400 cardiologists. During this time, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) recommended that doctors reduce their use of drug-eluting stents, but it did not ban the use of these devices.  The scholars set out to see how much the FDA's announcement affected behavior.  In particular, they wanted to see how experts reacted, as opposed to doctors with less experience.  Would overconfidence lead some experts to discount the new negative information?  Here's what they found: 

"For each standard deviation increase in experience, cardiologists were 6.3% more likely to use the drug-eluting stents before the FDA warning. Afterward, their use of the stents fell, but they were still more likely — 2.8% for each standard deviation increase in experience – than average to use the drug-eluting stents."

An article on the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School website summarizes the results and implications of this study:

It’s a kind of paradox. Are more experienced individuals – because of their presumably greater expertise – more likely to change their behavior when confronted by new information? Or are they more likely to resist new decisions because they’re confident about relying on their experience?  That’s the fundamental question tackled by Brad Staats, professor of operations and faculty director of the Center for the Business of Health at UNC Kenan-Flagler.  “Ideally, when you receive new information, you quickly adjust your decision-making – and you would expect the most experienced people would do so most accurately,” says Staats, “but our research indicates that might not be the case when they get negative news.”

The Benefits & Risks of International Experiences

A team of scholars has published an interesting new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology regarding the impact that foreign experiences have on our behavior (Jackson Lu, Jordi Quoidbach, Francesca Gino, Alek Chakroff, William Maddux, and Adam Galinksy).  They built upon prior research that has demonstrated that foreign experiences bring certain important benefits to individuals.  Specifically, prior work has shown that foreign experiences foster cognitive flexibility and enhance creativity.   They also reduce intergroup bias.  

This new study shows that foreign experiences have negative impacts as well.  These scholars conducted eight studies using multiple research methodologies.  They found that foreign experiences enhance moral flexibility.   By that, they mean that foreign experiences increased moral relativism, and thereby enhanced immoral behavior on the part of individuals.  The findings held true even for people of different ages and cultures.  The study certainly does not mean that we should limit our international educational, travel, and work experiences.   However, it does sound a note of caution about the effects these experiences have on us.  The benefits can be substantial, but some important risks do arise.   

Who is More Biased? The Crowd or the Expert?

 Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu have published a new working paper titled, "Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write With More Bias:  Evidence from Encyclopedia Brittanica and Wikipedia."  Their results surprised me.  I would have expected more bias from experts.  I thought the work of the crowd would mitigate biases by any particular contributors.  However, they found that Wikipedia entries exhibited more political bias than encyclopedia entries.  Here's what they said in their paper:  "Using a matched sample of pairs of articles from Britannica and Wikipedia, we show that, overall, Wikipedia articles are more slanted towards Democrat than Britannica articles, as well as more biased."  Perhaps not surprisingly, they did find that the Wikipedia articles tend to become less biased as they receive more and more revisions.  However, the overall analysis does show more bias with Wikipedia.  The scholars conclude, "It is surprising because the average Wikipedia article receives over 1,900 revisions and that is still not enough for eliminating bias."