Advice taking by groups: The effects of consensus seeking and member opinion differences

Abstract

Individuals often underutilize the advice they receive from others, a phenomenon known as egocentric advice discounting. Recent research suggests that this tendency may be even stronger in groups (Minson & Mueller, 2012; Schultze, Mojzisch, & Schulz-Hardt, 2019). Using a quantity estimation task, we tested five hypotheses about advice taking by groups and individuals. Chief among these is that groups will discount advice more than individuals do when they have reached consensus on the quantity in question prior to receiving that advice, but will discount it less than individuals do when, in addition to being prevented from reaching consensus beforehand, their members initially have rather different opinions about that quantity. We also tested the hypothesis that advice received from groups will be discounted less than advice received from individuals. Individuals and two-person teams received advice on 15 general knowledge questions that each called for a percentage response. Half of the teams were required to reach an initial consensus judgment before receiving that advice, while the rest were prevented from doing so. Study results support most of our hypotheses, and are discussed in terms of the motivated cognitive closure likely induced by pre-advice consensus seeking in groups.