Cheap Talk and Credibility: The Consequences of Confidence and Accuracy on Advisor Credibility and Persuasiveness

Sah, Sunita; MacCoun, Robert J.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1861475

Cited by 22 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Specifically, we investigate the influences of two types of credibility: the expert's track record as recalled by advisees (which we term 'experienced credibility') and the expert's status (which we term 'presumed credibility'). Our paper complements the work of Sah, Moore, and MacCoun (2013), who looked at the extent to which an advisor's track record and their confidence in their advice influenced opinion revision. The issues of presumed status and track records are also important because, as Armstrong suggested in his ''seer sucker'' theory, people are often motivated to pay large sums for forecasts elicited from people labeled 'experts', even when their forecasting accuracy is poor (Armstrong, 1980).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…The suggested link between the credibility of a source of advice and the resultant change in an advisee's attitudes and judgments is also acknowledged by research on advice-taking (e.g. Bonaccio & Dalal, 2006;Sah et al, 2013;See, Morrison, Rothman, &Yaniv, 2004). Van Swol and Sniezek (2005) investigated five factors that may affect the acceptance of advice: advisor confidence, advisor accuracy, the advisee's trust in the advisor, the advisee's prior relationship with the advisor, and the advisee's power to pay for the advisor's recommendations.…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 96%

“…Source credibility is an area of active research in many disciplines, including psychology, business, marketing, finance, risk communication, and information and health sciences (e.g., Berry & Shields, 2014;Chen & Tan, 2013;Sah et al, 2013;Willemsen, Neijens, &Bronner, 2012 andXie, Miao, Kuo, &Lee, 2011). Expertise is argued to constitute a critical dimension of source credibility (e.g., Kelman & Hovland, 1953).…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluating expert advice in forecasting: Users’ reactions to presumed vs. experienced credibility

Önkal

Gönül

Goodwin

et al. 2017

International Journal of Forecasting

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In expert knowledge elicitation (EKE) for forecasting, the perceived credibility of an expert is likely to affect the weighting attached to their advice. Four experiments have investigated the extent to which the implicit weighting depends on the advisor's experienced (reflecting the accuracy of their past forecasts), or presumed (based on their status) credibility. Compared to a control group, advice from a source with a high experienced credibility received a greater weighting, but having a low level of experienced credibility did not reduce the weighting. In contrast, a high presumed credibility did not increase the weighting relative to a control group, while a low presumed credibility decreased it. When there were opportunities for the two types of credibility to interact, a high experienced credibility tended to eclipse the presumed credibility if the advisees were non-experts. However, when the advisees were professionals, both the presumed and experienced credibility of the advisor were influential in determining the weight attached to the advice.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evaluating expert advice in forecasting: Users’ reactions to presumed vs. experienced credibility

Önkal

Gönül

Goodwin

et al. 2017

International Journal of Forecasting

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Confident advisors are believed to be more knowledgeable and hence more accurate than those who express less certainty, even when the latter are better calibrated (Yates, Price, Lee, & Ramirez, ). In other words, people make use of a ‘confidence heuristic’ (Price & Stone, ) and rely more on confident than on less confident advisors (Sniezek & Van Swol, ) — especially when information about hit rates is unavailable or costly to obtain (Sah, Moore, & MacCoun, ; Tenney, MacCoun, Spellman, & Hastie, ). However, studies indicate that degree of confidence (subjective probability estimates) is only weakly related to actual hit rates in several domains.…”

Section: Overprecision and The Preciseness Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilities Associated with Precise and Vague Forecasts

Løhre

Teigen

2017

Behavioral Decision Making

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Forecasts of future outcomes, such as the consequences of climate change, are given with different degrees of precision. Logically, more precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 3-4°) have a smaller probability of capturing the actual outcome than less precise forecasts (e.g., a temperature increase of 2-6°). Nevertheless, people often trust precise forecasts more than vague forecasts, perhaps because precision is associated with knowledge and expertise. In five experiments, we ask whether people expect highly confident forecasts to be associated with wider or narrower outcome ranges than less confident forecasts (Experiments 1, 2, and 5), and, conversely, whether they expect precise forecasts to be issued with higher or lower confidence than vague forecasts (Experiments 3 and 4). The results revealed two distinct ways of thinking about confidence intervals, labeled distributional (wide intervals seen as more probable than narrow intervals) and associative (wide intervals seen as more uncertain than narrow intervals). Distributional responses occurred somewhat more often in within-subjects designs, where wide and narrow prediction intervals and high and low probability estimates can be directly compared, whereas separate evaluations (in between-subjects design) suggested associative responses to be slightly more frequent. These findings are relevant for experts communicating forecasts through confidence intervals.

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“…Trust in the advice, however, was independent of the quality of advice received. Prior research has also noted that advisees take advice for reasons independent of advice quality (Sah, Loewenstein, et al, 2013;Sah, Moore, & MacCoun, 2013;Sniezek & Van Swol, 2001). For example, advisees are less likely to purchase verification data on advisors if advisors deliver advice with high confidence regardless of the quality of advice (Sah, Moore, et al, 2013).…”

Section: Factors That Influence Whether Second Opinions Could Be Benementioning

confidence: 99%

Conflicted advice and second opinions: Benefits, but unintended consequences

Sah

Loewenstein

2015

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

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Cheap Talk and Credibility: The Consequences of Confidence and Accuracy on Advisor Credibility and Persuasiveness

Cited by 22 publications

References 31 publications

Evaluating expert advice in forecasting: Users’ reactions to presumed vs. experienced credibility

Evaluating expert advice in forecasting: Users’ reactions to presumed vs. experienced credibility

Probabilities Associated with Precise and Vague Forecasts

Conflicted advice and second opinions: Benefits, but unintended consequences

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