IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v29y2008i5p667-683.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Giving advice under uncertainty: What you do, what you should do, and what others think you do

Author

Listed:
  • Hadar, Liat
  • Fischer, Ilan

Abstract

The current paper examines whether advisors rely primarily on their personal beliefs and risk preferences or on their estimates of their clients' beliefs and risk preferences. The results of two studies show that risk preferences predicted for other individuals were more risk neutral than personal risk preferences under uncertainty, though no differences were found between personal beliefs and those attributed to other individuals. This suggests that advice that is based primarily on personal risk preferences may differ from advice which is based primarily on advisors' estimates of clients' risk preferences. The results of a third study show that advisors rely on their personal risk preferences when giving advice. Based on these findings we suggest that managers should be cautious in accepting advice concerning which alternative ought to be pursued, as advisors tend to instinctively rely on their own risk preferences, which may differ from the manager's actual risk preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Hadar, Liat & Fischer, Ilan, 2008. "Giving advice under uncertainty: What you do, what you should do, and what others think you do," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 667-683, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:29:y:2008:i:5:p:667-683
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-4870(07)00111-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Loewenstein, George, 1996. "Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 272-292, March.
    2. George Wu & Richard Gonzalez, 1999. "Nonlinear Decision Weights in Choice Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(1), pages 74-85, January.
    3. David Faro & Yuval Rottenstreich, 2006. "Affect, Empathy, and Regressive Mispredictions of Others' Preferences Under Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(4), pages 529-541, April.
    4. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Lattimore, Pamela K. & Baker, Joanna R. & Witte, Ann D., 1992. "The influence of probability on risky choice: A parametric examination," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 377-400, May.
    6. Pamela K. Lattimore & Joanna R. Baker & A. Dryden Witte, 1992. "The Influence Of Probability on Risky Choice: A parametric Examination," NBER Technical Working Papers 0081, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Craig R. Fox & Amos Tversky, 1998. "A Belief-Based Account of Decision Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(7), pages 879-895, July.
    8. Elke U. Weber & Christopher Hsee, 1998. "Cross-Cultural Differences in Risk Perception, but Cross-Cultural Similarities in Attitudes Towards Perceived Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(9), pages 1205-1217, September.
    9. Mohammed Abdellaoui, 2000. "Parameter-Free Elicitation of Utility and Probability Weighting Functions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1497-1512, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Palmeira, Mauricio, 2020. "Advice in the presence of external cues: The impact of conflicting judgments on perceptions of expertise," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 82-96.
    2. Ginzburg, Boris & Guerra, José-Alberto & Lekfuangfu, Warn N., 2022. "Counting on my vote not counting: Expressive voting in committees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    3. François Desmoulins-Lebeault & Luc Meunier, 2018. "Moment Risks: Investment for Self and for a Firm," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 15(4), pages 242-266, December.
    4. Kevin Mole & Robert Baldock & David North, 2013. "Who Takes Advice? Firm Size Threshold, Competence, Concerns and Informality in a Contingency Approach," Research Papers 0009, Enterprise Research Centre.
    5. Kevin Mole & David North & Robert Baldock, 2017. "Which SMEs seek external support? Business characteristics, management behaviour and external influences in a contingency approach," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(3), pages 476-499, May.
    6. Carina Thürridl & Frauke Mattison Thompson, 2023. "Making brand activism successful: How advice-giving can boost support behavior and reap benefits for the brand," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 685-696, December.
    7. Polman, Evan & Wu, Kaiyang, 2020. "Decision making for others involving risk: A review and meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Leuermann, Andrea & Roth, Benjamin, 2012. "Does good advice come cheap? - On the assessment of risk preferences in the lab and the field," Working Papers 0534, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    9. Leiser, David & Azar, Ofer H. & Hadar, Liat, 2008. "Psychological construal of economic behavior," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 762-776, November.
    10. Marina Psiloutsikou, 2016. "The added value of coaching compared to a friendly discussion: Insight from behavioral economics," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Kavala Campus, Greece, vol. 9(2), pages 47-58, June.
    11. Andrew Grant & Oh Kang Kwon & Steve Satchell, 2024. "Properties of risk aversion estimated from portfolio weights," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(5), pages 427-444, September.
    12. Andrea Leuermann & Benjamin Roth, 2012. "Does Good Advice Come Cheap?: On the Assessment of Risk Preferences in the Lab and in the Field," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 475, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    13. Roth, Benjamin & Voskort, Andrea, 2014. "Stereotypes and false consensus: How financial professionals predict risk preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 553-565.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten & Meyer, Steffen & Hackethal, Andreas, 2019. "Taming models of prospect theory in the wild? Estimation of Vlcek and Hens (2011)," SAFE Working Paper Series 146, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    2. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Olivier L'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2011. "Experienced vs. Described Uncertainty: Do We Need Two Prospect Theory Specifications?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(10), pages 1879-1895, October.
    3. Jakusch, Sven Thorsten, 2017. "On the applicability of maximum likelihood methods: From experimental to financial data," SAFE Working Paper Series 148, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2017.
    4. José Lara Resende & George Wu, 2010. "Competence effects for choices involving gains and losses," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 109-132, April.
    5. Helga Fehr-Duda & Marc Schürer & Renate Schubert, 2006. "What Determines the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function?," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 06/54, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    6. Burson, Katherine A. & Faro, David & Rottenstreich, Yuval, 2010. "ABCs of principal-agent interactions: Accurate predictions, biased processes, and contrasts between working and delegating," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 1-12, September.
    7. Michael Kilka & Martin Weber, 2001. "What Determines the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function Under Uncertainty?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(12), pages 1712-1726, December.
    8. Martina Nardon & Paolo Pianca, 2019. "Behavioral premium principles," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 42(1), pages 229-257, June.
    9. Tomasz Potocki, 2012. "Cumulative Prospect Theory as a model of economic rationality," Ekonomia journal, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw, vol. 31.
    10. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Frank Vossmann & Martin Weber, 2005. "Choice-Based Elicitation and Decomposition of Decision Weights for Gains and Losses Under Uncertainty," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(9), pages 1384-1399, September.
    11. Christopher Schwand & Rudolf Vetschera & Lea Wakolbinger, 2010. "The influence of probabilities on the response mode bias in utility elicitation," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(3), pages 395-416, September.
    12. Ariane Charpin, 2018. "Tests des modèles de décision en situation de risque. Le cas des parieurs hippiques en France," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 69(5), pages 779-803.
    13. Luís Santos-Pinto & Adrian Bruhin & José Mata & Thomas Åstebro, 2015. "Detecting heterogeneous risk attitudes with mixed gambles," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(4), pages 573-600, December.
    14. Wang, Di, 2021. "Attention-driven probability weighting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    15. Oliver, Adam, 2003. "The internal consistency of the standard gamble: tests after adjusting for prospect theory," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 159, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Eyal Baharad & Doron Kliger, 2013. "Market failure in light of non-expected utility," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(4), pages 599-619, October.
    17. Kpegli, Yao Thibaut & Corgnet, Brice & Zylbersztejn, Adam, 2023. "All at once! A comprehensive and tractable semi-parametric method to elicit prospect theory components," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    18. Salvatore Greco & Fabio Rindone, 2014. "The bipolar Choquet integral representation," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 1-29, June.
    19. Jean Desrochers & J. Francois Outreville, 2013. "Uncertainty, Ambiguity and Risk Taking: an experimental investigation of consumer behavior and demand for insurance," ICER Working Papers 10-2013, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    20. Gijs van de Kuilen & Peter P. Wakker, 2011. "The Midweight Method to Measure Attitudes Toward Risk and Ambiguity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(3), pages 582-598, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:29:y:2008:i:5:p:667-683. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.