Monday, April 1, 2013

When You Reject Good Advice


Is it easier to give or to take?

To clarify: is it easier to give or to take advice?

Some people have trouble giving advice. They might fear that by offering an opinion they are disrespecting the recipient.

Then, if the recipient takes the advice, the giver will have to assume some measure of responsibility for the outcome. Most people are not very good at being responsible for their own behavior.

Also, they might hesitate to give advice because they lack confidence in their judgment.

And then there’s the larger problem. Let’s say that you are sufficiently old and wise to have some good advice to offer. The chances are good that you will be happy to give it to those who ask for it. By Adam Grant’s idea you will then become a giver. (See yesterday's post.)

But then, you are going to have to face this thorny problem: more than a few people will simply refuse to take good advice. It doesn’t even matter that the advice is excellent, to the point and clearly superior to all other solutions. Some people will simply reject it because it did not spring forth from the depths of their soul.

Harvard Professor Francesca Gino was so intrigued by the problem that she wrote a book about it. It’s title: SidetrackedIn it she asks why people sabotage themselves by failing to act in their own best interest when the course of action was recommended by someone else.

Gino notes correctly that successful people are very good at taking advice. They want to make the best decisions and therefore they seek out the best advice.

They do not take all the advice that is offered, but they never rely on just their own judgment, or better, on their gut.

Gino lists some of the reasons people do not take advice.

First, of course, is false pride, which we now call self-esteem. Some people are so insecure about their position and their competence that they dread being exposed as frauds. They come to believe that if they take advice that can only mean that they are incompetent.

Funnily enough, their refusal to take advice tends to confirm the fact that they are incompetent.

Second, Gino shows that it’s easier to take advice when you trust other people. If you are  angry and distrust others, if you feel that no one wants what is good for you, you will be less likely to trust their advice.

On the other hand if you see people as your friends, if you believe that they want what is best for you, you will be more likely to take advice.

This also suggests that people who refuse to take advice do not want to be beholden to their advisors. They do not want their decision-making to be part of a social transaction; they prefer not to owe anything to anyone.

But then, there’s a rub. If you are feeling anxious and insecure you are more likely to take advice, but you are also more likely to take bad advice.

While it is wrong never to take advice it is also wrong to take all of the advice that is offered.

Taking advice involves knowing which advice to take and which advice to reject.

People who are anxious tend to take whatever advice is offered.

Psychology Today summarizes her idea:

Disturbingly, anxiety lowers our self-confidence which causes us to discount our own judgment even when the only alternative is listening to advisors with a clear conflict of interest.  

We decide which advice to take by evaluating the source and by thinking through the ramifications and the potential outcomes. When we are anxious we are more interested in avoiding a trauma than in successfully completing a task.


9 comments:

JP said...

I generally ignored advice growing up because it was clear that I was basically significantly more intelligent than everyone I knew, including my own family. For the most part, they were utterly useless to me.

For example, when I tried to explain to everyone that there was a major housing bubble about 2006, they thought that I was a moron and the feeling was mutual.

I don't trust people because chances are that they have no idea what is actually going on and I know that they aren't looking at any kind of historical patterns to make decisions and they have no idea how to see into the future at all because they don't understand the past.

Anonymous said...

Advice is easy to give and hard to follow.

Jesus told his disciples: Cast not your pearls before swine, nor offer what is holy unto dogs. At best they will cast them down and trample upon your dignity. At worst they will tear you to pieces.

And did Jesus take his own advice on this matter?

A young man wrote an article many years ago, I forget the source. His father was always giving him advice. The son realized the meaning of the core message in his late twenties: If I were you I would be a better you than you are!

A person who offers advice, and will shame you for being unable to follow that advice, is serving his or her own needs at your expense.

David Foster said...

JP..."I generally ignored advice growing up because it was clear that I was basically significantly more intelligent than everyone I knew, including my own family...For example, when I tried to explain to everyone that there was a major housing bubble about 2006, they thought that I was a moron and the feeling was mutual."

But some very, very, very intelligent people were taken in by the housing bubble. It's not clear that *intelligence* is the primary operative factor in this kind of comprehension. One has to be intelligent enough to read the reports and understand the basic math, of course, but after that it's probably largely about the courage to deviate from the herd.

JP said...

"But some very, very, very intelligent people were taken in by the housing bubble. It's not clear that *intelligence* is the primary operative factor in this kind of comprehension. One has to be intelligent enough to read the reports and understand the basic math, of course, but after that it's probably largely about the courage to deviate from the herd."

Then it was a failure to understand social dynamics and human, which is itself certainly a form of intelligence.

For example, Issac Newton was clearly intelligent in his narrow domain, but was an absolute failure when it came to the social dynamics that drive speculative bubbles.

At this point, I'm pretty much blind, financially speaking, because I haven't been able to find an analogy that applies to the current financial-debt dynamics.

I haven't yet found anyone who seems to understand them, so it seems that we have entered a period of financial novelty.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to randomly follow a herd; rather it means that I know that no one knows what they are talking about.

I presume that it's easier to act against the herd when you grow up with the realization that it is likely that you are the only one who has the slightest idea what's really going on in various intellectual domains.

Granted, you kind of don't get the entire socialization experience.

However, if you want accuracy, sometimes anomie is the price of admission.

Anonymous said...

Taking advice is also called
'not re-inventing the wheel'.

It actually leaves time to invent new things.
-shoe

KT said...

Oh my. From the comments here I would guess that no one here is over the age of say 30?

At age 50 I look back on (good) advice I was given that I did not follow, largely because I did not trust that the giver was looking out for my best interest. Anxiety naturally played a part in it. So did having formative experiences with people who really did not have a clue as JP has related.

The best thing in hindsight I could have done would be to assess the advice giver's status in terms of my own goals and what I wished to achieve in life. Is this person someone whose life I see as desirable? Is this someone who has qualities I respect as a human being going forward, capable of growth? Capable of love?

I all too quickly cast off advice because of false pride "self esteem" and fear of incompetence at having to rely on anyone other than my own enlightened self.

"On the other hand if you see people as your friends, if you believe that they want what is best for you, you will be more likely to take advice."

The above was never the framework of my early years due to many factors not the least of which was complete distrust of others.

JP said...

I'm nearly 40.

I never had a problem trusting people.

I just generally realized that they didn't really know what was going on and so they were somewhat unhelpful.

Plus, they generally lived stable middle class lives, which I generally equated with "catastrophic life failure".

Granted, I never did develop goals nor anything I wanted to achieve in life.

Malcolm said...

Theodore Dalrymple speaks about this issue in this article.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/Theodore_Dalrymple/Heart_of_Darkness/

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