The Inverse U-Shaped Relationship Between Advice Precision And Taking In Career Decision Making:The Effect Of The Need For Cognitive Closure And Advice Sources

In professional decision-making,people usually adopt others’ advice to improve the quality of their decisions.When advice is adopted,the quality of the advice influences the quality of the decision to some extent.An important characteristic that indicates the quality of advice is the precision of advice.It has been shown that advice precision affects the degree to which decision makers adopt advice,but the relationship between advice precision and advice taking has been debated.Some researchers suggest that the relationship between advice precision and advice taking is monotonically increasing;others infer that there may be an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and advice taking based on the principle of conversational cooperation.Combining the principle of conversational cooperation and the "too much is too little" effect,this study suggests that there may be an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and adoption.Also,based on fuzzy avoidance theory,it is found that the need for cognitive closure affects the preference for precise advice;under the heuristic strategy,decision makers perceive that the precision of advice differs from source to source.In addition,based on the dual system model of decision making and reasoning,it is hypothesized that there may be an interaction between the need for cognitive closure and sources of advice.Therefore,this study will investigate the inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and taking up in career decision making and whether this inverted U-shaped relationship is influenced by the need for cognitive closure and sources of advice.In this study,the Decision Maker-Adviser System(JAS)was used to investigate the inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and taking,and how the inverted U-shaped relationship changed under the influence of the need for cognitive closure and sources of advice,using a career decision-making context as the experimental material.Study I used a one-way within-subjects experimental design,with advice precision as the independent variable and advice taking as the dependent variable,to explore the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and taking in career decision making.Study II used a mixed experimental design of 3(advice precision: low,medium,high)× 2(the need for cognitive closure: high,low)to explore the effect of the need for cognitive closure on the inverted U-shaped relationship.Study III used a mixed experimental design of 3(advice precision: low,medium,high)× 2(advice source: expert,novice)to explore the effect of advice source on the inverted U-shaped relationship.Study four used a mixed experimental design of 3(suggested precision: low,moderate,high)×2(the need for cognitive closure: high,low)× 2(advice source: expert,novice)to explore the effects of both the need for cognitive closure and the source of advice on the inverted U-shaped relationship.The results showed that there was a significant difference in the degree of advice taking at different levels of advice precision,and there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and advice taking.The interaction between the need for cognitive closure and advice precision was not significant,and the effect of the need for cognitive closure on the inverted U-shaped relationship was not significant.The interaction between advice source and advice precision showed a linear relationship between advice precision and adoption.The relationship between advice precision and adoption showed linearity under the triple interaction of the need for cognitive closure,advice source,and advice precision.Combining the results of the four studies,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice precision and advice taking in career decision making,with the highest level of taking at moderate levels of advice precision;(2)the source of advice makes the relationship between advice precision and advice taking linear,with decision makers placing more emphasis on the source of advice as a cue than on advice precision;(3)the need for cognitive closure,source of advice,and precision of advice combine to influence the taking of advice,and individuals with high cognitive closure need are more likely to take advice that originates from expert precision.This suggests that when faced with different levels of precision and different sources of advice,decision makers should adopt the advice rationally,pay more attention to the accuracy and validity of the advice than the moderately precision advice and the advice from experts,and make a comprehensive assessment of the quality of the advice before adopting it.