Flattering Advice: Avoiding Disappointment As A Driver of Gender Discrimination

Authors:

Abstract: The purpose of advice is to help recipients make better decisions and solve their problems. However, in this paper, we propose that advisors may also take recipients’ responses into account and attempt to avoid disappointing them, leading to what we call “flattering advice.” In two pre-registered experiments involving real interactions between advisors and advisees (n = 2,700), we show that individuals consider others’ expectations when giving advice, even when such expectations do not provide informative insights for the underlying decision-making problem. As a result, men receive more aspirational advice than women, given their higher confidence, when expectations (but not gender) are shown to advisors. However, incorporating expectations leads to worse outcomes (Study 1). Individuals inflate their advice due to interpersonal considerations: people who are concerned about advisees’ likability inflate their advice to a great extent. Advisees reward such flattering advice, finding the advisers more likable and no less trustworthy than those who provide more accurate advice (Study 2). We discuss practical and theoretical contributions and future research directions.

Track: DEI

Keywords: Gender difference, Advice, Interpresonal relationship