Judgments in judge-advisor-systems with multiple advisors

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Schulz-Hardt
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2014 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 248865509

Advice utilization is an integral part of judgment and decision making in everyday life. Whereas advice utilization in situations with one single advisor has been extensively studied, so far only very little is known about how multiple advice is integrated into individual judgments. In this research program we aim at closing this gap by specifically investigating topics that are characteristic of situations with multiple advisors. First, we want to demonstrate that differences in the presentation of multiple advice affect the outcome of the judgment process. Therefore, we compare the simultaneous presentation of multiple advice with a sequential presentation. In the next step, we present a model of decreasing advice weighting during sequential advice presentation and test the general validity of this model as well as its sensitivity for order effects. Finally, we address the question of how aggregated advice (i.e. the mean of a sample of individual advices) is weighted and used in the judgment process. Our findings should help to deepen our understanding of how advice is utilized and integrated, and it should also facilitate the development of interventions aimed at optimizing the use of multiple advice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants