The Power Of Advice And How It Does Affect Us

How often do you seek advice from other
people? Most of us ask for advice from time to
time, especially if we are struggling with a
problem or a challenge and we know little
about the situation we have found ourselves
in. The obvious solution is to ask someone
who knows a lot more than we do, so we can
benefit from their knowledge.

Getting advice from the right person
Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “Nobody can
give you wiser advice than yourself.” This is
quite true in many circumstances but it
doesn’t mean you cannot reach out to others
too. For example let’s suppose you are
wondering how you will manage financially in
your retirement and you don’t quite know
where to turn. If you have someone you can
rely on who knows all about the government
benefits and other similar sources of support
available to retired people, they would be an
invaluable source of help and advice. This is
part of our Befriending Scheme that is run to
assist the elderly and the disabled.
You can seek and follow advice from many
different quarters. However it is always wise
to weigh up any advice you receive. The last
thing you want is to act on advice that actually
isn’t that good. That’s why it makes sense to
seek out the right advice from the right person
(or people, depending on the situation).
For example if you have a pond in your garden
and you want to add some fish to it, you
wouldn’t ask someone with no experience of
keeping fish. You’d ask someone with their
own pond and fish, and experience of what it’s
like to keep them. Similarly if you need advice
on retirement benefits you would ask
someone with experience in this area. This
helps to ensure you get the information you
need, so you can press ahead with
confidence.
How advice can change your life
It is amazing how one piece of advice can
make such a difference to your life. That’s
why it helps so much to seek out advice from
the right people whenever you can. You
shouldn’t be afraid of asking for advice either
because it can make all the difference to your
situation. Our charity has been going since
1997 and in the intervening years we have
done all we can to ensure we help all kinds of
individuals who need it. We have given plenty
of advice in those years and hopefully we
shall continue to do so for many years to
come.
We know how important it is to provide the
best and most helpful advice to those who
need it. As such we’re in a good position to
see the benefits that good advice can bring.
Think about this carefully if you’re in need of
advice and don’t be afraid to ask for it from
the right sources. You might be pleased at the
results you eventually get.
Let’s end with a great quote from none other
than Oscar Wilde: “I always pass on good
advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is
never of any use to oneself.”
Greater power will be associated with less advice taking. The mediating role of confidence in judgment To explain why power might make people less likely to revise their initial judgment in response to advice, we argue that a critical mechanism is confidence in the accuracy of one’s own judgment. Previous published research has not directly examined the relationship between power and confidence in accuracy. There is, however, research on the relationship between power and more global forms of confidence. Brinol, Petty, Valle, Rucker, and Beccera (2007: 1043) found that individuals in higher power conditions reported a higher ‘‘general level of confidence in themselves,’’ as well as higher confidence in the thoughts underlying their attitudes toward a vaccination policy. As these authors note, people might develop an association between power and self-confidence based on experiences with powerful individuals, who tend to display behaviors that convey confidence (e.g., see Cansler & Stiles, 1981; De Paulo & Friedman, 1998; Fast, Sivanathan, Mayer, & Galinsky, 2011; Fragale, 2006; Hall, Coats, & Smith LeBeau, 2005). As a result, because power andconfidencecancometobeassociated in people’s minds, when power is activated, this may also activate confidence. Building from this logic, we suggest that power may elevate confidence in the accuracy of one’s own judgment. Other evidence that power may increase confidence in one’s judgment stems from research showing a positive relationship between power and self-evaluations of one’s capabilities and performance (Georgesen & Harris, 1998). In addition, research in the tradition of construal level theory has documented that some types of power are associated with the use of language that conveys certainty (Magee, Milliken, & Lurie, 2010; Smith & Trope, 2006). There is also evidence that power directly increases psychological states that may be related to confidence, such as optimism and sense of control over future events (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, & Galinsky, 2009). Thus, we expect that power might also have a cognitive effect on how people evaluate the accuracy of their own judgments.