Which expert advice

They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. Yet it remains true that every great innovation has occurred precisely because someone ignored the experts and went their own way.

You find what we write valuable. I know I find the words of my peers on Management Issues inspiring, informative and helpful. You could drive yourself crazy trying to follow every piece of advice you get. And often the experts disagree. So how is a rational, intelligent and diligent human supposed to take all this advice without their craniums imploding? It was shown that the next day after viewing a celebrity paired with a product, the greater the perceived expertise of the celebrity, the greater the intention to purchase the product and the greater the memory for the product.

This study provided evidence for the implicit influence of expertise on decision making, and although in the present study we focused on the explicit influence of expertise, our results agree with their behavioral findings, showing that people are more influenced by individuals whom they perceive to have more expertise.

Furthermore, conformity to group opinion has previously been shown to recruit the intraparietal sulcus, temporoparietal junction, insular cortex, anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex [15] — [17] , [39] , [40]. Importantly, in the most recent study by Campbell-Meiklejohn et al. Thus, our results concerning advice utilization, taken together with this recent publication on conformity, strongly suggest a role for the lateral orbitofrontal cortex in the computation of social influence.

Previous neuroimaging research has investigated aspects of advice taking that are different from the present study. Neural correlates for receiving advice, compared to not receiving advice, have been demonstrated in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction [13]. Furthermore, when making repeated decisions with the same advisor and receiving feedback on decision outcomes, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction are active during the outcome period [12].

In this second study, these regions computed a social prediction error allowing a person to learn the trustworthiness of their advisor. The septal area demonstrated a greater signal change after both positive and negative feedback from recommended choices compared to non-recommended choices.

The current study did not demonstrate involvement of similar brain regions. However, this is not surprising because we focused on the differences between using expert and novice advice, and not the differences between making decisions with or without advice. Furthermore, we investigated brain activity at the time participants received advice and related it to behavioral change via the weight of advice index. Examining brain activity at the time we receive and utilize advice and relating it to the behavioral change caused by the advice is crucial to understanding how we integrate advice into the decision making process.

In conclusion, with the present report, we demonstrate how people use advice when making decisions. We show that advice-taking consists of three neurocognitive processes: the valuation of advice, the assessment of the opinion difference, and the process of combining valuation and the opinion difference resulting in actual advice utilization.

This last process was shown to occur in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, where the average activity correlates with the mean use of advice across participants.

This result establishes the lateral orbitofrontal cortex as a region of the brain responsible for the behavioral influence of advice. As a whole, our findings provide neural evidence for how advice engenders behavioral change during the decision making process, and advance the overall understanding of how humans use advice.

Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants discovered whom their advisor will be Time 1. Advice includes both the expert and novice conditions. Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants received advice Time 2. We thank C. Morawetz and N. Green for discussion, Y. Heussen and H. Bruehl for language translation, A. Hatri and L.

Bennett for technical assistance, and D. Schiller for comments on the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

PLoS One. Published online Nov Christoph W. Hauke R. Jean Daunizeau, Editor. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Received Jun 13; Accepted Oct This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Associated Data Supplementary Materials Figure S1: Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants discovered whom their advisor will be Time 1. Figure S2: Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants received advice Time 2. Abstract People often use expert advice when making decisions in our society, but how we are influenced by this advice has yet to be understood.

Introduction Many important decisions are made while under the influence of expert advice, from a politician receiving counsel when deciding whether to raise taxes, to a cancer patient being advised by their doctor when deciding whether to undergo chemotherapy.

Experimental Cover Story Participants were told that they would be estimating the monthly rental price of apartments in New York City for a monetary reward. Stimuli Descriptions and price information of real apartments offered for rent in New York City were obtained from www. Procedure Before scanning, each participant was given two training sessions. Open in a separate window. Figure 1. Experimental task.

Figure 2. Behavioral data illustrating the utilization of advice. To address our hypotheses concerning the valuation of advice, the assessment of the opinion difference, and a region of the brain representing the behavioral influence of advice, a general linear model was fit to the data with the following 14 regressors: R1. For the periods of first estimation in the task. For the periods when the advisor was revealed in the task Time 1 : R2. An expert advisor was revealed. A novice advisor was revealed.

Figure 3. Brain regions showing a main effect between the expert and novice condition. Figure 4. Brain regions demonstrating differential activity due to size of opinion difference upon revealing the advice Time 2. Figure 5. Interaction effect between expertise and size of opinion difference when advice was revealed Time 2 in left lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Neuroimaging Results The value of advice We hypothesized that the same areas which represent value and reward expectation when receiving money and objects, such as the ventral striatum [6] , also represent value when receiving advice.

Table 1 Significant activation clusters for expertise contrasts at Time 1 when participants discovered whom their advisor will be. L, Left; R, Right. Expert versus novice advice utilization To examine brain activity associated with utilizing advice from sources with different levels of expertise, we analyzed brain activity when participants received the advice Time 2.

Table 2 Significant activation clusters for expertise contrasts at Time 2 when participants used advice. PFC, prefrontal cortex. The opinion difference We hypothesized that the opinion difference would be represented in previously established reward-sensitive regions. Table 3 Significant activation clusters for opinion difference contrasts at Time 2 when participants received advice.

OD, opinion difference. The influence of advice We tested the hypothesis that changes in BOLD signal in areas integrating both the expertise level of the advisor and the opinion difference would correlate with the behavioral influence of advice. Table 4 Significant activation clusters for opinion difference interaction contrasts at Time 2 when participants received advice.

Discussion In the present study, we designed a task to emulate real world decision making situations where people form an initial opinion, discover they will be receiving advice along with the expertise level of their advisor , receive advice and then adjust their opinion to make a final decision.

Supporting Information Figure S1 Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants discovered whom their advisor will be Time 1. TIF Click here for additional data file. Figure S2 Brain regions showing a main effect between the advice and no advice conditions when participants received advice Time 2.

DOCX Click here for additional data file. Acknowledgments We thank C. References 1. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 70 : — Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 17 : — Jungermann H, Fischer K Using expertise and experience for giving and taking advice. The Journal of Neuroscience 27 : — NeuroReport 12 : — The Journal of Neuroscience 25 : — Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 93 : 1— Science : — The Journal of Neuroscience 29 : — NeuroReport 11 : — Nature : — doi: PloS One 4 : e PLoS Biology 9 : e Neuron 61 : — Current Biology 20 : — Psychological Science 22 : — Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 3 : — Psychological Science 20 : — Bonaccio S, Dalal R Advice taking and decision-making: An integrative literature review, and implications for the organizational sciences.

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes : — NeuroImage 23 : S— Smith SM Fast robust automated brain extraction. Human Brain Mapping 17 : — Jenkinson M, Bannister P, Brady M, Smith S Improved optimization for the robust and accurate linear registration and motion correction of brain images.

NeuroImage 17 : — Jenkinson M Fast, automated, N-dimensional phase-unwrapping algorithm. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 49 : — This text, written by sit 'n go expert Collin Moshman, is a poker strategy book devoted exclusively to these tournaments. Collin Moshman, An illustrated guide to shed construction takes amateur carpenter's on a tour of potting sheds, garden storage sheds, storage barns, lean-to tool lockers, and saltboxes, among other styles, offering step-by-step instructions for building Joseph Truini, The book also contains a glossary.

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