Advice Seeking Research Articles

The Role of Self-Monitoring and Motivation on Discretionary Advice: Evidence From a Field Study

Despite the pivotal role that self-monitoring plays in a multitude of social exchange situations and the preference of high self-monitors to look good in the eyes of others, relatively little is known about the role of self-monitoring on discretionary advice tie formation. This paper addresses tie formation choices relative to one’s opportunity seeking triggers. Based on the embeddedness literature and self-monitoring theory we develop and empirically test two hypotheses on the interrelation between self-monitoring (trait), motivation (trigger) and discretionary advice seeking (action). Drawing on data collected at a global pharmaceutical company, and based on a quantitative analysis using dyad-level regression models with multiway clustered observations, our findings suggest high self-monitors preferentially reach out to dissimilar others in advice seeking. We find intrinsic motivation to mitigate this effect amongst high self-monitors such that enjoyability positively stimulates self-monitoring ability. Extrinsic motivation, in turn, moderates the positive effect of self-monitoring on the formation of new ties such that external rewards positively stimulate self-monitoring sensitivity. Our findings nuance the notion that high self-monitors are more likely to engage in advice seeking activity than low self-monitors, suggesting one’s motivational preference to moderate this relation as trigger towards actual action. We conclude with discussing the implications of these findings for the study of social exchange processes in an intra-organizational and innovation aspiring context.

The Future of Help at Work: An Expert Panel

Since first being studied in management about half a century ago, the research on help has expanded to include multiple sub-domains (e.g., OCBs, reciprocity, volunteering, advice seeking), hundreds of publications, best-selling books, and tens of thousands of citations attributed to this work. Taken together, this past effort begs the question: what does the future of help at work look like? Our symposium includes four expert panelists working on the front lines as academics and practitioners examining and facilitating this phenomenon, and asks them to address specific questions about the Future of Help at Work. The questions are designed to inform both research and practice on this topic, as well as addressing the theme for this year’s conference, Creating a Better World Together.

House Level Latent Classes as Predictors of Recovery and Evictions

ABSTRACT The current study explored whether substance abuse recovery houses could be categorized into meaningful classes, which might be associated with house evictions as well as changes in individual-level recovery capital. A total of 602 individuals from 42 recovery homes were followed for up to 6 data collection periods over 2 years. House level latent class analyses were based on house-level data. A 3-class model fit very well (entropy 0.94) and better than a 2-class model. Class profiles examined concurrent (averaged across waves 1 and 2) house and resident-level variables (e.g., gender, race, age, employment, education). Class was then used to prospectively predict outcomes of the hazard of eviction and improvement in a recovery index over waves 3–6. One latent class representing 45% of the recovery houses had the highest density of members willing to loan, able to pay their rent, active involvement in outside chapter activities–this group of houses had the best outcomes including the lowest eviction rate and highest mean recovery factor. The two other classes had higher eviction rates, with one having the lowest density of friendship, selectivity of residents, and ability to pay rent. The other of the higher eviction-rate classes surprisingly had the highest density of friendship and advice seeking, but the lowest density of willingness to loan. These findings suggest that there are meaningful differences in types of recovery homes, and that house characteristics appear to influence recovery changes and eviction outcomes.

From adversity to advice: Survival threats as a trigger for sustained engagement with external business support in small firms

This article analyses the relationship between the experience of a crisis and advice seeking in small firms. Although the benefits of business advice and support to smaller firms are well documented, smaller firms are often reluctant to seek external advice, relying instead on informal routines and a focus on daily operations. Conceptualising crisis as a trigger for advice seeking, and using survey data from 2089 small firms, we find a strong and significant relationship between experiencing a crisis and seeking external business advice up to five years after the crisis. This sustained effect on advice seeking is particularly strong for firms who also sought advice at the time of the crisis. Additionally, we find that the effect of a business crisis on sustained advice seeking is stronger for firms subject to a crisis with external origins.

Exploring differences in crisis literacy and efficacy on behavioral responses during infectious disease outbreaks

This study examined the effects of literacy and efficacy on individuals’ protective action taking and information seeking during the early phase of infectious disease outbreaks through a nationally representative survey of 1164 U.S. adults. New measures of disaster literacy and crisis efficacy were tested. Overall, results revealed that crisis efficacy and organizational efficacy drove protective action taking and information seeking intentions, while health literacy did not. Disaster literacy negatively predicted both protective action advice seeking and information seeking. The findings highlight the importance of strengthening public efficacy and improving relationships between health authorities and the public, which is greatly influenced by the public’s confidence in the health authority’s management of the crisis.

Resident physicians' advice seeking and error making: A social networks approach.

Resident physicians are especially at risk of being involved in medical errors because they bear tremendous responsibility for patient care yet are still in the process of learning and mastering their profession. To increase knowledge and gain information, they create a professional-instrumental network, that is, the deliberate initiation of advice ties with senior physicians. We aim to explore whether and how residents' networking with senior physicians is associated with their error rates. Specifically, we aim to identify whether the centralities of residents (advice seekers) and senior physicians (advice givers) in the social network are associated with residents' error rates. We surveyed 142 resident physicians working in 22 wards in two general hospitals about whom and how frequently they consult using a sociometric technique. Information about errors made in a 3-month period was collected independently. Residents made less errors when they sought advice from few senior physicians but consulted more frequently with focal senior physicians (those whom many other advice seekers frequently consult). However, when residents sought advice from many senior physicians, their frequency of consultation with focal senior physicians was not associated with their number of errors. These effects were more pronounced for residents at the beginning of their residency period. Results of this study provide evidence of a specific association between resident physicians' consultation patterns and their error rates. Results inform ward managers about ways to leverage opportunities and remove constraints for residents to ask for advice and for focal physicians to provide it.

Retirement income beliefs and financial advice seeking behaviors

This investigation identifies and validates a series of salient behavioral finance and psychological constructs that influence retirement income planning. We show how these scales relate to each other as well as retirement income concerns and investment behaviors. We also describe how four invest- ment personas can be linked with the Advisor Usefulness and Retirement Income Self-Efficacy scales to successfully identify preferred financial implementation methods. This can assist individu- als in more readily recognizing their relative strengths and weaknesses when implementing a retire- ment income strategy, and financial professionals can present advice in a manner that addresses a client’s concerns and preferred implementation.

Who Can I Ask? Who Would I Tell? An Egocentric Network Analysis Among a Sample of Women At-Risk to Explore Anticipated Advice Seeking and Disclosure Around Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP).

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) health campaigns invite women to talk with their provider, partner, and peers about PrEP, though they do not offer specific guidance about who and how to engage. This study uses egocentric network methods in a sample of women at risk for HIV to understand what characteristics of women (egos), their networks, and network members (alters) were associated with anticipated PrEP advice-seeking and anticipated PrEP disclosure. Multivariable generalized linear mixed models revealed that women often consider close, supportive, and trusted network members as PrEP discussants while ego-level, network-level, and cross-level interactions depict the complexity of anticipated network activation. Findings highlight the importance of considering women at risk for HIV in a broader social context. Anticipated advice-seeking and disclosure related to PrEP were associated but distinct forms of network activation, which highlights the need to develop specific recommendations about who and how women should engage with their networks around PrEP.

Where do they go for advice? Entrepreneurs’ advice-seeking behavior in Africa

Using time-lagged primary data from entrepreneurs in two developing countries (Ghana, N = 261 and Ethiopia, N = 166), we examine how institutional voids drive entrepreneurs’ advice seeking behavior. Our findings show that higher levels of institutional voids in these developing countries are negatively related to internal advice-seeking but positively associated with external advice-seeking. The results also show that a heightened perception of environmental dynamism negatively moderates the relationship between institutional voids and internal advice-seeking but positively moderates the effect of institutional voids and external advice-seeking. Furthermore, we find that the negative relationship between institutional voids and internal advice-seeking is positive when entrepreneurs develop ties with politicians. The positive relationship between institutional voids and external advice-seeking is amplified when political network connections are stronger. Implications and direction for future research are discussed.

Young adults' financial advice‐seeking behavior: The roles of parental financial socialization

AbstractObjectiveThis study investigated the association between family financial socialization during adolescence and seeking financial advice in early adulthood. Personality, financial risk tolerance, and financial knowledge were examined as mediators. Gender differences throughout the parental financial socialization process and outcome were also explored.BackgroundYoung adults are transitioning into adulthood. It has been found they lack fundamental financial knowledge and are more vulnerable to financial stress and financial shocks. Understanding young adults' financial advice‐seeking behavior is important because it is linked to positive financial outcomes. Parents serve as significant financial socialization agents for their children and can influence their financial knowledge, attitude, behavior, and long‐term well‐being. However, little attention has been paid to the role of parents in the financial socialization process on children's financial advice seeking in early adulthood.MethodUsing the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the family financial socialization model, we constructed a structural framework in which we could examine whether two aspects of family financial socialization, parenting style and receiving allowance, influenced young adults' propensity to seek financial advice. Also, the mediating roles of personality traits, financial risk tolerance, and financial knowledge were examined.ResultsPersonality traits, financial risk tolerance, and financial knowledge were directly associated with financial advice‐seeking behavior. Parenting style and receiving allowance during adolescence were indirectly associated with young adults' financial advice‐seeking behavior. Additional analyses by gender showed significant differences in the direct and indirect associations among financial socialization factors, personality traits, and financial advice‐seeking behavior between men and women.ConclusionThis study illustrates the association between early financial socialization and financial advice‐seeking behavior through psychological and knowledge factors focusing on the importance of family influence. Using a national dataset and the structural equation modeling method, we found insightful direct, indirect, and total effects of parental financial socialization on young adults' financial advice‐seeking behavior and significant gender differences in these effects.ImplicationsThe findings provide implications for policymakers and financial educators and practitioners. This study underscores the significant role of parents as financial socialization agents and their long‐term influence on adult children's financial advice‐seeking decisions. Current financial literacy programs not only should focus on educator–student relationships but also need to pay attention to parental involvement in children's financial socialization process. Adult financial education would help parents play a role in providing financial advice to their children as more capable socialization agents. Accessible financial counseling services at the community level can potentially meet the needs of young adults who have a lower financial knowledge to benefit from professional advice.

A Relational Understanding of Co-Educating and Learning: Information Sharing and Advice Seeking Behavior in a Dairy Cooperative in Gujarat, India

• Co-education and learning are an essential principle of the ICA’s statement on Cooperative Identity. • Social embeddedness and social capital play a crucial role in promoting knowledge sharing and learning behaviour among cooperative members. • Knowledge-based and position-based hierarchies play prominent roles in information sharing and advice sharing. • Just being the leader in the collective does not earn members’ trust. Members seek help or collaborate with leaders who have the required knowledge and skills to solve their issues. This article, building on the 5 th principle of the Statement of the Cooperative Identity explores the practice of co-educating and learning behavior among the members of a dairy cooperative society. The study adopts a social network approach by focusing on two relational social ties: information sharing and advice-seeking . Building on a case of a 55-year-old dairy cooperative in India, the social network analysis finds information-sharing relations among members to be inclusive, with no members isolated, and information exchanged along formal and knowledge hierarchies. Likewise, information sharing is horizontal, with information smoothly exchanged even among new and already established members, as is the transfer of leadership roles from the older members of the cooperatives to the younger members. Advice-seeking networks tend to be a bit more centralized toward board members and members exerting day-to-day leadership because of their knowledge and expertise regarding the organization and its policies. Our analysis suggests inclusive information sharing among members and a well-structured and functioning advice and knowledge-sharing network that contributes to learning of the cooperative members.

Financial advice seeking and behavioral bias

This study explicates the role of behavioral bias in financial advice seeking. Investors with behavioral biases are prone to making poor financial decisions, which advisors may help to eradicate. Drawing on an online survey of experienced individual investors, this study examines how behavioral bias affects financial advice seeking. The three biases identified in this study influence advice seeking differently: overconfident investors tend to invest by themselves, while investors with selfprotection bias and/or mental accounting bias are more likely to seek financial advice. The pedagogical implication is to address these biases to the public in financial literacy initiatives.

Physical and Mental Health Effects of Bushfire and Smoke in the Australian Capital Territory 2019–20

The 2019–20 bushfire season in south-eastern Australia was one of the most severe in recorded history. Bushfire smoke-related air pollution reached hazardous levels in major metropolitan areas, including the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), for prolonged periods of time. Bushfire smoke directly challenges human health through effects on respiratory and cardiac function, but can also indirectly affect health, wellbeing and quality of life. Few studies have examined the specific health effects of bushfire smoke, separate from direct effects of fire, and looked beyond physical health symptoms to consider effects on mental health and lifestyle in Australian communities. This paper describes an assessment of the health impacts of this prolonged exposure to hazardous levels of bushfire smoke in the ACT and surrounding area during the 2019–20 bushfire season. An online survey captured information on demographics, health (physical and mental health, sleep) and medical advice seeking from 2,084 adult participants (40% male, median age 45 years). Almost all participants (97%) experienced at least one physical health symptom that they attributed to smoke, most commonly eye or throat irritation, and cough. Over half of responders self-reported symptoms of anxiety and/or feeling depressed and approximately half reported poorer sleep. Women reported all symptoms more frequently than men. Participants with existing medical conditions or poorer self-rated health, parents and those directly affected by fire (in either the current or previous fire seasons) also experienced poorer physical, mental health and/or sleep symptoms. Approximately 17% of people sought advice from a medical health practitioner, most commonly a general practitioner, to manage their symptoms. This study demonstrated that prolonged exposure to bushfire smoke can have substantial effects on health. Holistic approaches to understanding, preventing and mitigating the effects of smoke, not just on physical health but on mental health, and the intersection of these, is important. Improved public health messaging is needed to address uncertainty about how individuals can protect their and their families health for future events. This should be informed by identifying subgroups of the population, such as those with existing health conditions, parents, or those directly exposed to fire who may be at a greater risk.

Dyads, triads, and tetrads: a multivariate simulation approach to uncovering network motifs in social graphs

Motifs represent local subgraphs that are overrepresented in networks. Several disciplines document multiple instances in which motifs appear in graphs and provide insight into the structure and processes of these networks. In the current paper, we focus on social networks and examine the prevalence of dyad, triad, and symmetric tetrad motifs among 24 networks that represent six types of social interactions: friendship, legislative co-sponsorship, Twitter messages, advice seeking, email communication, and terrorist collusion. Given that the correct control distribution for detecting motifs is a matter of continuous debate, we propose a novel approach that compares the local patterns of observed networks to random graphs simulated from exponential random graph models. Our proposed technique can produce conditional distributions that control for multiple, lower-level structural patterns simultaneously. We find evidence for five motifs using our approach, including the reciprocated dyad, three triads, and one symmetric tetrad. Results highlight the importance of mutuality, hierarchy, and clustering across multiple social interactions, and provide evidence of “structural signatures” within different genres of graph. Similarities also emerge between our findings and those in other disciplines, such as the preponderance of transitive triads.

Career Mobility and Hiring Bias: Frontiers of Labor Market Research

Career Mobility and Hiring Bias: Frontiers of Labor Market Research

Dear Solomon, dear Prudence: Using student written advice responses to demonstrate and teach theory application

People often seek advice and social support. One approach for seeking advice is by submitting one’s problems/concerns to an advice columnist. More contemporary forms of advice seeking are seen on discussion boards (e.g. Reddit) where individuals ask questions (often anonymously) and gather responses from others. This activity makes use of advice-seeking scenarios so that students better understand and apply interpersonal and health communication theories. Students are guided in the process of providing advice while using course-specific relevant communication theory to craft their responses. In this article, we explain the activity, provide examples of two requests for advice, and include recommendations for assessment. Courses : Interpersonal Communication/Health Communication. Objectives : The goal of this activity is to help students retain and apply communication theories/models by using relatable hypothetical advice-seeking requests.

Dynamic interdependence of advice seeking, loaning, and recovery characteristics in recovery homes

ABSTRACT Recovery homes in the US provide stable housing for over 250,000 individuals with past histories of homelessness, psychiatric comorbidity and criminal justice involvement. We need to know more about how these settings help those who remain in recovery. Our study measured advice seeking and willingness-to-loan relationships, and operationalized them as a dynamic multiplex social network—multiple, simultaneous interdependent relationships—that exist within 42 Oxford House recovery homes over time. By pooling relationship dynamics across recovery houses, a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Modeling (SAOM) framework was used to estimate a set of parameters governing the evolution of the network and the recovery attributes of the nodes simultaneously. Findings indicated that advice and loan relationships and recovery-related attitudes were endogenously interdependent, and these results were affected exogenously by gender, ethnicity, and reason for leaving the recovery houses. Prior findings had indicated that higher advice seeking in recovery houses was related to higher levels of stress with more negative outcomes. However, the current study found that recovery is enhanced over time if advice was sought from residents with higher recovery scores. Our study shows that social embedding, i.e., one’s position in relationship networks affects recovery prospects. More specifically, the formation of ties with relatively more recovered residents is an important predictor of better outcomes.

Confidence, advice seeking and changes of mind in decision making

Humans and other animals rely on social learning strategies to guide their behaviour, especially when the task is difficult and individual learning might be costly or ineffective. Recent models of individual and group decision-making suggest that subjective confidence judgments are a prime candidate in guiding the way people seek and integrate information from social sources. The present study investigates the way people choose and use advice as a function of the confidence in their decisions, using a perceptual decision task to carefully control the quality of participants' decisions and the advice provided. The results show that reported confidence guides the search for new information in accordance with probabilistic normative models. Moreover, large inter-individual differences were found, which strongly correlated with more traditional measures of metacognition. However, the extent to which participants used the advice they received deviated from what would be expected under a Bayesian update of confidence, and instead was characterised by heuristic-like strategies of categorically ignoring vs. accepting advice provided, again with substantial individual differences apparent in the relative dominance of these strategies.

A Household View of Making Purchases on Margin: Focusing on Divergence in Investment Literacy and Advice Seeking Behavior

A great deal of research has studied the use of margin from an overall market perspective. However, very little has been observed regarding household decisions around margin use. The 2018 wave of the National Financial Capability Study Investor Survey provides unique insight into household margin use, and these new variables have made studying margin use on a household level possible. This study investigates the relation between both objective and subjective investment literacy, as well as the divergence in investment literacy and margin use. Results indicate that respondents who have a higher level of subjective investment literacy than objective investment literacy (investors who think they know more than they actually do) have a higher probability of buying on margin. This finding appears to be even more pronounced for respondents who receive investment advice from brokers compared to those who do not.

Emergency education effects on teacher abilities and motivation to use digital technologies

AbstractTo identify factors that can contribute toward supporting educator adoption of digital technologies beyond the emergency remote teaching response to COVID‐19, we investigated how teachers’ motivation and abilities related to the use of digital technologies for teaching changed since the onset of the pandemic. Two surveys and interviews were conducted with school teachers in Spain. The first survey was completed at the onset of the COVID‐19 lockdown, the second survey and interviews in the weeks leading up to the school year that followed. Survey questions were from SELFIE and the Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers. Moreover we analysed the type of advice teachers sought on Twitter during the lockdown and post‐lockdown periods. Results indicate that teachers believe their proficiency in using digital technologies for teaching has improved. Teacher confidence in using technology for preparing lessons, class teaching, assessing and providing feedback, and for communicating with students and families has increased along with teacher motivation to improve their digital skills and use digital technologies for teaching. Teacher advice seeking on Twitter seemed to shift from serving immediate instructional needs to focussing on professional development and the creation of their own digital content. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic There is a need to enhance educator digital skills and competences for a digital transformation of education. The emergency remote teaching response to COVID‐19 made educators increase their usage of technology. What this paper adds Teachers’ motivation and abilities related to the use of digital technologies for teaching have changed since the onset of the pandemic. Teachers believe their proficiency in using digital technologies for teaching has improved. Teacher confidence in using technology for preparing lessons, class teaching, assessing and providing feedback, and communication has increased. Teacher motivation to use digital technologies in their teaching practice increased during the pandemic. Teacher advice seeking on Twitter shifted from serving immediate instructional needs to focusing on professional development and the creation of their own digital content. Implications for practice and/or policy COVID‐19 has rapidly advanced teacher digital skills and has altered their relationships with digital technologies for teaching and learning. Teachers have acquired a range of new experiences related to using digital technologies for teaching from which future initiatives can build upon.