What’s Accessible Is Expressible: When Advice Seekers Are More Likely to Anchor Their Advisors

Abstract

Despite evidence that advice is most beneficial for increasing decision accuracy when advisors form independent judgments, people sometimes undermine this independence by sharing their preliminary conclusions when seeking advice. We propose that following the prescription to think independently before seeking advice paradoxically leads people to make this mistake. Specifically, we argue that deeper engagement with a decision makes one’s own perspective more accessible and likely to be shared during an advice interaction. In two preregistered studies (N = 2,109), we demonstrate that higher levels of engagement with the decision prior to seeking advice increase the likelihood that the seeker will anchor the advisor. This suggests that advice seekers who follow prescriptions to form a judgment prior to seeking advice may inadvertently introduce bias into advice interactions, undermining the independence of the advice they seek. These findings contribute to the advice-seeking literature by revealing a process by which anchors emerge naturally in information exchange.