Influence Of Decision Makers’ Advice-seeking Motivations On The Advice-giving Behavior Of Advisor

People often seek advice from others or give advice to others in daily life.This process is called advice interaction.It is generally believed that people seek advice for the sake of improving the decision-making accuracy.Which is named accuracy motivation.But sometimes seeking advice is not only for the accuracy of the results,but also for emotional support,such as respect,recognition or understanding.Which is named relationship motivation.Based on the Transactive Goal Dynamics Theory,the goals of decision makers and advisors interact with each other in the process of advice interaction,and one goal will affect the behavior of the other.When giving advice to others,advisors often consider the potential motivation of the advice seeker.Previous studies have also shown that the judgment of other people’s intentions will affect the process of social interaction.Therefore,advisors are likely to decide whether they are willing to give advice and how to give advice based on the decision makers’ motivation to seek advice,for example,how much time and effort they spend searching and processing relevant information.Three experiments were conducted to explore the different impact of decision makers’ accuracy motivation and relationship motivation on the giving-advice behavior of advisors and its’ mechanism.In Experiment 1,by disclosing the motivation of decision makers’ advice seeking to advice giver,the effect of decision maker advice seeking motivation on advice giver behavior was explored using a lottery box recommendation task.Experiment 2 using a preference task,how the advisor reported their willingness to give advice and possible search efforts were tested.However,the possible search effort of self-assessment may be different from the actual behavior.So in Experiment 3,asking participants to conduct an actual advice information search task,the influence of the decision maker’s motivation on the advice giver’s advice giving behavior and the moderating role of social distance in the relationship between decision makers’ motivation and advisors’ advice giving behavior were further examined.The results showed that:(1)There was no significant different in the advisors’ willingness to give advice for decision makers with different advice-seeking motivations.(2)The advisors made higher search efforts,more searches,longer search time and felt more trusted when searching for advice information,if they learned the decision makers’ advice seeking is due to accuracy motivation compared with relationship motivation.(3)The impact of decision makers’ advice-seeking motivation on advisor’s expected advice-giving behavior is mediated by maximize accuracy.(4)Social distance plays a moderating role in the effect of different advice-seeking motivations on advice giving,i.e.,social proximity promotes higher search effort,more searches,and longer search time under relational motivation disclosure of decision makers.