The present research addresses advice taking from a holistic perspective covering both advice seeking and weighting. We build on previous theorizing that assumes that underweighting of advice results from biased samples of information. That is, decision makers have more knowledge supporting their own judgment than that of another person and thus weight the former stronger than the latter. In the present approach, we assume that participants reduce this informational asymmetry by the sampling of advice and that sampling frequency depends on the information ecology. Advice that is distant from the decision maker’s initial estimate should lead to a higher frequency of advice sampling than close advice. Moreover, we assume that advice distant from the decision maker’s initial estimate and advice that is supported by larger samples of advisory estimates are weighted more strongly in the final judgment. We expand the classical research paradigm with a sampling phase that allows participants to sample any number of advisory estimates before revising their judgments. Three experiments strongly support these hypotheses, thereby advancing our understanding of advice taking as an adaptive process.

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Kim and Hommel (2015) provided an intriguing alternative explanation for conformity effects. Building on the theory of event coding (TEC;Hommel, 2009;Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001), they assumed that one's own and others' actions are represented in comparable ways, so that people may fail to distinguish between those two action categories. As a consequence, "people's actions that have no social meaning should induce conformity effects" (p. 484).Building on a paradigm previously used to investigate social conformity (Klucharev, Hytönen, Rijpkema, Smidts, & Fernández, 2009;Shestakova et al., 2013), Kim and Hommel tested their hypothesis in three experiments involving facial-beauty ratings. In a first block, participants rated the beauty of 220 faces on a scale from 1 to 8 using a computer keyboard. After each rating, participants were presented with an intervening event. Participants saw either a static slide showing a number between 1 and 8 or a short movie in which another person pressed the respective number key (1-8) on a computer keyboard. These numbers were equal to, 2 to 3 points lower than, or 2 to 3 points higher than the rating given by the participant (equal, lower, and higher conditions, respectively). In a second block, all faces were again rated on the same scale from 1 to 8. The hypothesis was that numbers lower than the initial rating should lead to a negativity shift, whereas numbers higher than the initial rating should lead to a positivity shift. The authors present support for this across all three experiments.Critically, the paradigm confounded extremity of initial ratings and assignment of experimental condition (equal vs. lower vs. higher). Since the rating scale was restricted from 1 to 8, experimental condition could not be assigned independently of initial ratings. For example, it was not possible to assign an initial rating of 7 719082P SSXXX10.