Advice Seeker Research Articles

Understanding the Influence Discrepancy Between Human and Artificial Agent in Advice Interactions: The Role of Stereotypical Perception of Agency

This paper proposes that artificial agents’ underperformance in interpersonal influence situations can be explained by stereotypical perceptions of such agents’ lack of capacity to act and accomplish goals (i.e., agency), triggered by their non-human identity. In two experiments of text-based conversations ( N = 305 and 309), the identity of a human advice giver was manipulated to be either a human or a chatbot. The chatbot identity resulted in less perceived agency of the giver, which then mediated the identity’s effects on the advice seeker’s (a) perceived advice effectiveness and (b) intention to follow advice after the conversation, as well as (c) adherence to advice and (d) trouble relief after a week. A positive correlation between perceived agency of the artificial agent and the seeker’s self-efficacy was identified as part of this mediation. In contrast, perceived emotional capacity (i.e., experience), despite a discrepancy between the two identities, had non-significant mediating effects.

Digging deep or scratching the surface? Contingent innovation outcomes of seeking advice from geographically distant ties

Advice-seeking is an essential, daily R&D task. Therefore, the configuration of advice ties around a focal R&D worker likely determines their individual performance. Among the network dimensions considered in prior research, the geographical distance between advice providers and a focal advice seeker rarely has been investigated, despite widespread recognition that geography strongly affects knowledge circulation. To capture the effects of geographical distance on advice-seeking success, the current study takes a mixed method approach and investigate R&D engineers in a French cluster related to the semi-conductor industry. By analyzing the lived experience of 17 R&D workers, as recounted in in-depth interviews, we draw a conceptual distinction between surface and deep advice-seeking (study 1). These types differ in terms of their temporality, form of reciprocity and expected contribution. Consistent with this dual conceptualization and previous literature on the geography of knowledge, we predict that distant ties in the context of deep advice-seeking are beneficial to the innovation performance of R&D workers, but detrimental in the context of surface advice-seeking. A test of these hypotheses, involving 113 R&D workers, provides support for the proposed model (study 2). All in all, the paper sheds new light on geography and location as essential factors of innovation.

Geographical Distance in Advice Networks and Individual Patenting Performance

R&D engineers rely on daily advice seeking to achieve their tasks and, accordingly, how their advice ties are arranged influences their individual performance. Among network dimensions, the role of geographical distance between advice providers and a focal advice seeker has rarely been investigated, despite extended literature on how geography affects knowledge circulation. To capture the effects of geographical distance in advice networks, we take a mixed method approach. We analyze the lived experience of R&D workers, as recounted in in-depth interviews, which results in a conceptual distinction between two types of advice seeking: surface and deep advice seeking. They differ in terms of their process, form of reciprocity, and expected contribution. Equipped with this dual conceptualization and prior literature on the geography of knowledge, we theorize that geographical distance benefits deep advice seeking but is detrimental to surface advice seeking. We find support for our hypotheses using a sample of 113 R&D workers from the French semi-conductor industry.

Prevalence of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) in Lamar- Libya Primary Care General practices

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic or recurrent abdominal symptom. No cause can be identified using conventional diagnostic testing and it is characterized by abdominal pain or cramping and changes in bowel function. Aims of our study were to estimate the prevalence of functional bowel disorders namely C1; Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) among clinic-based patients, and to assess health-care seeking in subjects with functional bowel disorders. The study used participants recruited from AL Marj- Libyan Red Crescent Clinic primary care general practices. Between November 2012 and December 2013, each study subject was asked according to a prepared questionnaire. This questionnaire depends on Rome III diagnostic criteria for irritable bowel syndrome. 450 consecutive patients attended the Red Crescent Clinic, 234 (52%) were female and 216 (48 %) were male. Population age ranged from 20-80 years, and the mean age was 53 years (SD+ 15.6). In our study, the prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is 12%, and 53.3% of the subjects had looked for medical advice for abdominal pain. There was no significant association observed between the prevalence of IBS and sex. IBS was11.9% in women and 12.1% in men. Elderly were the least frequent sufferer of IBS and the least medical advice seeker compared to younger age groups, which necessitate not overlooking organic cause in such age group. Considerable patients seek medication and traditional remedies due to their bowel disorders. Further investigations of the treatment are required because of the high financial burden for individuals as well as for the society.

Who's Driving this Conversation? Systematic Biases in the Content of Online Consumer Discussions

When consumers post questions online, who influences the content of the discussion more: the consumer posting the question or those who respond to the post? Analyses of data from real online discussion forums and four experiments show that early responses to a post tend to drive the content of the discussion as much as or more than the content of the initial query. Although advice seekers posting to online discussion forums often explicitly tell respondents which attributes are most important to them, the authors demonstrate that one common online posting goal, affiliation, makes respondents more likely to repeat attributes mentioned by previous respondents, even if those attributes are less important to the advice seeker or support a suboptimal choice given the advice seeker's decision criteria. Firms “listening in” on social media should account for this systematic bias when making decisions on the basis of the discussion content.

Homophily in an Anonymous Online Community: Sociodemographic Versus Personality Traits.

In what traits do people interact with others who are similar to them in completely anonymous online communication? Can those traits contribute to greater exchange of opinion and information across the sociodemographic boundaries that often limit interaction between social strata? To answer this question concerning online homophily, we combined survey data on 7,287 users (aged 18 and above) of a Korean online dating advice platform with their behavioral data from June 2015 to August 2015 and explored whether advice exchange occurred between users with similar sociodemographic and personality traits. On this platform, two types of interactions occurred as follows: (1) responses to a randomly distributed problem submitted by an advice seeker and (2) the seeker's indication of approval of any of the responses given. The study found that (1) a receiver was more likely to respond to problems submitted by seekers of a comparable age and that (2) seekers were more likely to approve of a response if the seeker and receiver had similar educational backgrounds. By contrast, homophily based on personality traits was not observed even though some personality traits significantly affected the likelihood of both response and approval. Our findings suggest that online communication may breed sociodemographic homophily, whether based on age or education, more than expected or intended while not easily fostering alternative forms of homophily, such as personality homophily, which can potentially cut across borders dividing sociodemographic groups.

Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking

AbstractFive studies examined cultural differences in reasons for advice‐seeking behaviors. Content analyses in Study 1A and self‐ratings in Study 1B consistently revealed that Euro‐Canadians were more likely than East Asians (mainly Chinese) to seek advice for informational reasons, whereas East Asians were more likely than Euro‐Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons. Study 2A showed that Chinese displayed a higher level of relationship concern than Euro‐Canadians in deciding from whom to seek advice in a decision dilemma. Study 2B found that, although Chinese and Euro‐Canadians did not differ from each other on willingness to pay for informational advice, Chinese were willing to pay more for building a relationship with the advisor through advice seeking than Euro‐Canadians were. Study 3 explored how the advice giver might perceive an advice seeker in terms of their competence and the closeness of their relationship after advice was sought for various reasons. We found that relationally oriented advice seeking increased the perceived competence of the advice seeker among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Information‐oriented advice seeking increased the perceived closeness between the advice seeker and advice giver among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Implications for other aspects of advice exchange are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gender Roles and Expectations

One consequence of the advent of cyber communication is that increasing numbers of people go online to ask for, obtain, and presumably act upon advice dispensed by unknown peers. Just as advice seekers may not have access to information about the identities, ideologies, and other personal characteristics of advice givers, advice givers are equally ignorant about their interlocutors except for the bits of demographic information that the latter may offer freely. In the present study, that information concerns sex. As the sex of the advice seeker may be the only, or the predominant, contextual variable at hand, it is expected that that identifier will guide advice givers in formulating their advice. The aim of this project is to investigate whether and how the sex of advice givers and receivers affects the type of advice, through the empirical analysis of a corpus of web-based Spanish language forums on personal relationship difficulties. The data revealed that, in the absence of individuating information beyond that implicit in the advice request, internalized gender expectations along the lines of agency and communality are the sources from which advice givers draw to guide their counsel. This is despite the trend in discursive practices used in formulating advice, suggesting greater language convergence across sexes.

Five years into the national second-opinion project of the German Testicular Cancer Group (GCTSG): Impact on guideline implementation and the quality of care for testicular cancer patients.

4530 Background: The diagnosis and therapy of testicular germ cell tumors are subject to constant change. Numerous national and international guidelines have been published since the 1990s in order to meet this challenge. It is questionable, however, whether mere publication of guidelines will lead to their implementation. The aim of the present project of the GTCSG was to establish a national second-opinion network in order to improve the implementation of guidelines and the quality of care. Methods: Before determining the primary therapy, participating urologists could communicate with one of 30 second-opinion centers (SOC) via an internet-based platform. The data set comprised the primary clinical, radiological and pathohistological findings, the therapy planned by the advice seeker (first opinion), the therapy recommended by the SOC (second opinion), and the applied therapy as well as the 2-year follow-up data. Primary end points of the study were congruence between the first and second opinion, treatment changes based on the second opinion, and relapse-free 2-year survival. Results: A total of 1722 SOC requests have been submitted since November 2006. At the time of our data analysis 927 cases were evaluated. The response rate was 75.8% for treatment data and 74.4% for 2-year follow-up data. Advice seekers and SOC had discrepant treatment concepts in 43.3% of the cases; this discrepancy was independent of tumor histology and increased in advanced tumor stages (clinical stage ≥IIa: 52.3% vs. <IIa: 34%; p<0.001, Pearson Χ2 test). The SOC request led to reduction of the applied therapy in 11.4% and intensification in 9.5% of the cases. Progression-free 2-year survival was 92% (112/122) for stage I, 90% (17/19) for stage IIa-IIb, and 65% (17/26) for stage ≥IIc. Conclusions: Guidelines for the treatment of germ cell tumors are inadequately implemented, particularly in advanced tumor stages. Every fifth second opinion resulted in a relevant change in the scope of therapy. Patients whose treatment was congruent with the second opinion had a relapse rate comparable to that of study results in the literature.

3D Visualization as a Communicative Aid in Pharmaceutical Advice-Giving over Distance

BackgroundMedication misuse results in considerable problems for both patient and society. It is a complex problem with many contributing factors, including timely access to product information.ObjectiveTo investigate the value of 3-dimensional (3D) visualization paired with video conferencing as a tool for pharmaceutical advice over distance in terms of accessibility and ease of use for the advice seeker.MethodsWe created a Web-based communication service called AssistancePlus that allows an advisor to demonstrate the physical handling of a complex pharmaceutical product to an advice seeker with the aid of 3D visualization and audio/video conferencing. AssistancePlus was tested in 2 separate user studies performed in a usability lab, under realistic settings and emulating a real usage situation. In the first study, 10 pharmacy students were assisted by 2 advisors from the Swedish National Co-operation of Pharmacies’ call centre on the use of an asthma inhaler. The student-advisor interview sessions were filmed on video to qualitatively explore their experience of giving and receiving advice with the aid of 3D visualization. In the second study, 3 advisors from the same call centre instructed 23 participants recruited from the general public on the use of 2 products: (1) an insulin injection pen, and (2) a growth hormone injection syringe. First, participants received advice on one product in an audio-recorded telephone call and for the other product in a video-recorded AssistancePlus session (product order balanced). In conjunction with the AssistancePlus session, participants answered a questionnaire regarding accessibility, perceived expressiveness, and general usefulness of 3D visualization for advice-giving over distance compared with the telephone and were given a short interview focusing on their experience of the 3D features.ResultsIn both studies, participants found the AssistancePlus service helpful in providing clear and exact instructions. In the second study, directly comparing AssistancePlus and the telephone, AssistancePlus was judged positively for ease of communication (P = .001), personal contact (P = .001), explanatory power (P < .001), and efficiency (P < .001). Participants in both studies said that they would welcome this type of service as an alternative to the telephone and to face-to-face interaction when a physical meeting is not possible or not convenient. However, although AssistancePlus was considered as easy to use as the telephone, they would choose AssistancePlus over the telephone only when the complexity of the question demanded the higher level of expressiveness it offers. For simpler questions, a simpler service was preferred.Conclusions3D visualization paired with video conferencing can be useful for advice-giving over distance, specifically for issues that require a higher level of communicative expressiveness than the telephone can offer. 3D-supported advice-giving can increase the range of issues that can be handled over distance and thus improve access to product information.

Where do intra-organizational advice relations come from? The role of informal status and social capital in social exchange

Social status and social capital frameworks are used to derive competing hypotheses about the emergence and structure of advice relations in organizations. Although both approaches build on a social exchange framework, they differ in their behavioral micro-foundations. From a status perspective, advice giving is a means to generate prestige, whereas asking advice decreases one's relative standing. At a structural level these motivations are expected to result in an overrepresentation of non-reciprocal dyads and non-cyclical triadic structures in the advice network, as well as in active advice seekers being unlikely to be approached for advice, especially by active advice givers. From a social capital perspective, advice seeking creates obligations for the advice seeker. At the structural level, this results in an overrepresentation of reciprocal dyads and cyclical triads, and active advice seekers to be unpopular as targets of advice seeking, especially for active advice givers. Analyses of four waves of a longitudinal sociometric study of 57 employees of a Dutch Housing Corporation provide partial support for both approaches. In line with the social capital perspective, we find reciprocal advice relations to be overrepresented at the dyad level. Results at the triad level support the social status arguments, according to which high status individuals will avoid asking advice from low status individuals. The implications for macro-structural properties of intra-organizational advice network are discussed.

Formulating dispositions in coming out advice

This article considers the advice found on six internet sites written for people who are considering coming out. The article uses Edwards’ (1994, 1995, 1997) script formulation theory to examine how the grammatical choices by the writers formulate the dispositions of the main actors in the texts: the advice seeker, LGB individuals, and the people to whom they come out. The writers’ formulations are shaped by a view of coming out as the act of a reasonable, emotionally healthy, moral and loving lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) individual. It is argued that one of the purposes of these texts is to normalize coming out as a routine event and as a rational course of action for an LGB individual. Furthermore, the use of script formulation is seen to be characteristic of written texts and a strategy by which advice writers can legitimize themselves as qualified to give advice.

Enabling e-transactions with multi-attribute preference models

This paper describes potential applications of multi-attribute preference models (MAPM) in e-commerce and offers some guidelines for their implementation. MAPM are methodologies for modeling complex preferences that depend on more than one attribute or criterion, and include multi-attribute utility theory, conjoint analysis, and the Analytic Hierarchy Process. There are numerous examples of applications in e-commerce that would benefit from the acquisition of information regarding the preferences of a consumer, a customer, an advice seeker, or a decision maker. Here, the focus is on applications of MAPM models in B2C and B2B websites, where preferences of consumers are assessed for the purpose of identifying products or services that closely match their needs. In this paper, we provide an overview of decision aids with the MAPM approach, emphasizing how the MAPM structure of an individual’s preferences may be assessed. This discussion is illustrated with examples of the use of alternative MAPM assessment approaches that are incorporated in existing websites. We then discuss how MAPM applications should be tailored for success in these environments.

Building Collegial Information Networks: A Theory of Advice Network Generation

The theory of network generation I present predicts actor selection and retention in forming an advice network. The research question explored is whom do people contact when needing advice? The theory posits that the advice seeker, when possessing rich information on potential alters, decides whom to contact by trading off expected knowledge value versus the cost of obtaining it. In the contact information poor case, alter selection antecedents are the potential contact's accessibility and perceived willingness to share advice.