70 For Me, 30 For You
A working paper by Ilan Yaniv says we do listen to others, but we weigh our opinion 70% and someone else’s equally qualified opinion 30%:
Suppose you are responsible for hiring someone to fill a job, and you initially had a strongly favorable opinion about a candidate but are told that a colleague of yours has a lukewarm opinion of the same candidate. … from your internal point of view, the two opinions are not on a par. Decision makers place more weight on beliefs for which they have more evidence. Because decision makers are privy to their own thoughts, but not to the reasons underlying an advisor’s opinion, they place a higher weight on their own opinion than on an advisor’s. Indeed, studies show that other things being equal, people discount others’ opinions and prefer their own, with the weights split roughly 70% on self and 30% on other; this balance changes when differences in ability or knowledge between self and other are made salient
Is this self-preference a bias? The main excuse I can see is that you might need to use your detailed reasons to make more detailed choices. For example, you might prefer job candidates where you know the reasons they are good, because those reasons could help you match them to tasks. Without such an excuse, you need a better than average reason to think that your reasons are better than the average reasons of others you don’t see.
Perhaps the 70/30 weighting reflects how much advise is influenced by differing preferences in typical advise situations?
After all, I am the one who has to live with the consequences of my decision.
That is a difference in preferences in most advice situations: since I am responsible for my decision, my penalty for error is larger than that of a colleague, who is simply motivated to do the best possible choice (while I am strongly motivated to avoid the worst).
So there are many circumstances where we should give much more weight to others opinions, especially in low risk/high reward ventures.
I noticed that Harvey and Fischer's paper used a point reward system. If, instead, they were to deduct points from a set total, that could test whether people behave differently when it's their "responsibility" (using status quo bias in our favour!).
Anne, even when you do ask for and hear reasons, you usually do not understand all the details of their reasons.