How expert advice influences decision making

PLoS One. 2012;7(11):e49748. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049748. Epub 2012 Nov 21.

Abstract

People often use expert advice when making decisions in our society, but how we are influenced by this advice has yet to be understood. To address this, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we provided expert and novice advice to participants during an estimation task. Participants reported that they valued expert advice more than novice advice, and activity in the ventral striatum correlated with this valuation, even before decisions with the advice were made. When using advice, participants compared their initial opinion to their advisor's opinion. This comparison, termed the "opinion difference", influenced advice utilization and was represented in reward-sensitive brain regions. Finally, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex integrated both the size of the opinion difference and the advisor's level of expertise, and average activity in this area correlated with mean advice utilization across participants. Taken together, these findings provide neural evidence for how advice engenders behavioral change during the decision-making process.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Behavior
  • Brain / pathology*
  • Brain Mapping / methods
  • Choice Behavior*
  • Decision Making*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
  • Male
  • Neuroimaging / methods*
  • Professional Competence
  • Reward

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and Humboldt University in Berlin. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.