Using Advice Without Considering Its Quality: A Laboratory Experiment of Demand for Advice

Abstract

We experimentally test how the content of advice, namely, its alignment with common priors, influences beliefs about its quality and future demand for it. We reject the theoretical hypothesis that demand for advice can be increased by giving advice in alignment with common priors. We find, furthermore, that such alignment has hardly any impact on the participants' beliefs about quality of advice. Nevertheless, advice influences participants' guesses in an incentivized task, regardless of their beliefs about the quality of advice itself.