Learning Processes in the Judge–Advisor System: A Neglected Advantage of Advice Taking

Abstract

Previous research in the judge–advisor paradigm has focused on how judges utilize the wisdom of others by taking their advice and on the beneficial effect of receiving advice on judges' postadvice final judgments about the exact same problem. However, a completely different possibility of how judges might benefit from advice has been overlooked so far: Learning processes could improve the accuracy of judges' subsequent initial judgments from one problem to another problem on the same type of task as well. Hence, we test the assumption that advice can induce individual performance enhancements that differ as a function of the advisor's judgment accuracy. The results of three experiments support our hypothesis and indicate positive learning, particularly when participants receive high-quality advice. Furthermore, we show that external information about the advisor's accuracy is not crucial for the occurrence of these individual performance enhancements. In general, our results suggest that advice can have a positive effect on judges' subsequent initial judgments.