Integration of argument-based advice: An evaluative ecological perspective on the structural differences between positive and negative advice

Argument-based advice is an important type of advice in people’s lives. Yet, it is underrepresented in advice-taking research. The present research investigates structural properties of argument-based advice in the form of naturally generated positive and negative reasons for or against a decision option, respectively, with a focus on advice similarity. In three preregistered experiments, participants (N total = 623) completed a spatial arrangement task in which they organized the reasons on their screen to indicate advice similarity. Afterward, participants rated the reasons in terms of valence (Experiments 1–3), informativeness (Experiment 2), as well as relevance and novelty (Experiment 3). In Experiments 2 and 3, participants additionally indicated their perceived likelihood of engaging in the decision options before and after receiving the advice. All experiments document that positive advice is perceived as more similar than negative advice. Furthermore, Experiment 2 reveals that positive advice is perceived as more informative. Experiment 3 clarifies that this informativeness is an effect of higher personal relevance, not novelty, which is higher for negative advice. Advice similarity does not significantly influence final judgments in Experiment 2, but the significance pattern of Experiment 3 suggests that consistency matters for advice integration in one’s final judgments. By targeting advice in the form of reasons for and against a decision option, the presented work offers novel insights into structural properties of argument-based advice and their role for advice integration.