Individuals Adjust Their Degree of Advice Taking to Impress Others

As a form of interpersonal interaction, advice taking may occur after decision makers consider others' evaluations and impressions of them. Previous work has examined how other people view decision makers when they do or do not decide to take their advice. Our work examines whether decision makers realize this effect and therefore take advice strategically for the purpose of impression management. Four studies were designed to investigate the impression management mechanism of advice taking. Study 1 shows that individuals tend to consider decision makers who accepted others' advice as warmer and those who rejected others' advice as more competent. Decision makers can also accurately predict others' view of them in terms of whether they are warm or competent from their degree of advice taking. Studies 2 and 3 show that decision makers strategically adopt others' advice to engage in impression management. That is, when they want to show others they are warm, they rely more heavily on advice, whereas when they want to show they are competent, they rely less on advice. Study 4 shows that impression management in advice taking is more likely to occur when the advice comes from a person whom they want to impress.