Advice is a powerful means to improve peoples' judgments and decisions. Because advice quality is rarely apparent, decision-makers must infer it from the characteristics of the advisor or the advice itself. Here, we focus on a largely neglected advice characteristic that should signal quality: advice precision. In a preregistered, high-powered study (N = 195), we tested the effects of advice precision on advice taking. Drawing from past research and theorizing on anchor precision, we derived and tested two competing hypotheses for the relation of advice precision and advice taking—one predicting a monotone increase in advice taking when advice precision increases and the other predicting a backfiring effect of overly precise advice resulting in an inverted U-shape. Our results support the notion of a monotone, albeit not a strong monotone, relationship. Higher perceived advice quality correlated with individuals' advice taking. Consistent with the idea that advice precision serves as a cue for advice quality, the effect of advice precision on advice taking was statistically mediated by perceived advice quality. Although the mediation analysis does not allow for causal interpretation because we did not manipulate the mediating variable, it shows that the effect of advice precision on advice taking is not merely a demand effect. Implications of our findings for theory and practice are discussed.

中文翻译：

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数字建议精度如何影响建议采纳

建议是改善人们判断和决定的有力手段。由于建议质量很少是显而易见的，决策者必须根据顾问的特征或建议本身来推断它。在这里，我们关注一个在很大程度上被忽视的建议特征，它应该表明质量：建议精度。在一项预先注册的高效研究 ( N= 195），我们测试了建议精度对建议采纳的影响。根据过去关于锚定精度的研究和理论，我们推导出并测试了两个相互竞争的假设，用于建议精度和建议采纳的关系——一个预测当建议精度增加时建议采纳单调增加，另一个预测过度精确建议的适得其反的效果导致倒U形。我们的结果支持单调关系的概念，尽管不是强单调关系。更高的感知建议质量与个人的建议采纳相关。与建议精确度作为建议质量提示的观点一致，建议精确度对建议采纳的影响在统计上由感知建议质量介导。虽然中介分析由于我们没有操纵中介变量而不允许进行因果解释，但它表明建议精度对建议采纳的影响不仅仅是需求效应。讨论了我们的发现对理论和实践的影响。