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Page 1: Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking · Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking LI-JUN JI1*, NING ZHANG1*, ... including but not limited to self-concepts, emotional

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Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking

Article  in  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · October 2016

DOI: 10.1002/bdm.1995

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Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking

LI-JUN JI1*, NING ZHANG1*, YE LI2, ZHIYONG ZHANG3, GILLIAN HARPER1, MARK KHEI1 and JIE LI4

1Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada2Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China3Beijing University, Beijing, China4Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot, China

ABSTRACT

Five studies examined cultural differences in reasons for advice-seeking behaviors. Content analyses in Study 1A and self-ratings in Study 1Bconsistently revealed that Euro-Canadians were more likely than East Asians (mainly Chinese) to seek advice for informational reasons,whereas East Asians were more likely than Euro-Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons. Study 2A showed that Chinese displayeda higher level of relationship concern than Euro-Canadians in deciding from whom to seek advice in a decision dilemma. Study 2B found that,although Chinese and Euro-Canadians did not differ from each other on willingness to pay for informational advice, Chinese were willing topay more for building a relationship with the advisor through advice seeking than Euro-Canadians were. Study 3 explored how the advicegiver might perceive an advice seeker in terms of their competence and the closeness of their relationship after advice was sought for variousreasons. We found that relationally oriented advice seeking increased the perceived competence of the advice seeker among Chinese more thanamong Euro-Canadians. Information-oriented advice seeking increased the perceived closeness between the advice seeker and advice giveramong Chinese more than among Euro-Canadians. Implications for other aspects of advice exchange are discussed. Copyright © 2016 JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd.

key words advice seeking; reasons; information; relationship; cultural differences

INTRODUCTION

People receive and give advice on a daily basis, from minordecisions such as which movie to watch to important deci-sions such as which university to attend. Given the signifi-cant role of advice exchange in everyday decision making,it is not surprising that research on advice exchange, suchas advice giving and advice taking, has received substantialattention among psychologists, as well as communicationand decision-making researchers (Bonaccio & Dalal, 2006;Sanders, 1980; Yaniv, 2004; Yaniv & Kleinberger, 2000).The present paper will focus on one aspect of advice ex-change that has not been well investigated: advice seekingand the reasons for it. We will examine advice seeking acrosscultures by comparing and contrastin g Euro-Canadians andEast Asians (Chinese in particular). We will first discuss cul-tural differences in emphasis on relationships, then turn tothe literature on advice exchange and explore the implica-tions of cultural differences in relationship emphasis for ad-vice seeking.

Culture and emphasis on relationshipPeople from different cultures emphasize relationships to dif-ferent degrees. We focus our literature review on comparingEuro-North Americans (Americans and Canadians ofEuropean descent) and East Asians (mainly Chinese,Japanese, and Koreans). We recognize that differences do ex-ist between Americans and Canadians (e.g., Abramson,Keating, & Lane, 1996; Hofstede & Bond, 1984), and be-tween Chinese and other East Asian groups in certain psy-chological phenomena (e.g., Miyamoto, Knoepfler, Ishii, &Ji, 2013; Yates et al., 2010), but also acknowledge that re-search has shown consistent results among NorthAmericans, and among East Asians concerning relationshipemphasis (see Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus &Kitayama, 2010 for reviews). Cultural differences in relation-ship emphasis have been observed in a variety of domains,including but not limited to self-concepts, emotional experi-ences, subjective well-being, motivations, and communica-tion practices (see Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett,1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus & Kitayama,2010; Scollon & Scollon, 1995; Triandis, 1989 for reviews).

Euro-North Americans and East Asians define the self dif-ferently. While defining the self, Euro-North Americans tendto emphasize independence, personal choice, and self-expression, whereas East Asians tend to emphasize interde-pendence, seeing themselves as part of a relationship, and de-fining themselves in relation to others (e.g., Fiske et al.,1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus & Kitayama,2010; Triandis, 1989). For example, when asked to definethemselves using the Twenty Statement Test, Chinese partic-ipants were more likely to refer to their relationship withothers (e.g., “I am Jane’s friend”) than were American

*Correspondence to: Li-Jun Ji and Ning Zhang, 62 Arch Street, Departmentof Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3 N6,E-mail [email protected], [email protected]: The research was supported by grants from the Social Science and Hu-manities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC Grants 410-2009-0904, 435-2012-1279) to L.J. Ji. We would like to thank Sarah Cabecinha-Alati, DarcieDrew, Shenxing Feng, Hu He, Kelly Huang, Sainan Ji, Siyan Jing, MelissaLucas, Stella Moon, Feiyang Pan, Ermiao Zhang, Jennifer Zhang, ShujunZhang for their help with data collection. We also thank Marissa Walterfor her help with early versions of the paper.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30: 708–718 (2017)Published online 3 October 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/bdm.1995

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participants (Bond & Cheung, 1983; Ip & Bond, 1995). Ac-cordingly, East Asians are more likely than Euro-NorthAmericans to attend to others, which is necessary for main-taining one’s relationships and to achieve interpersonal har-mony with others. Specifically, Ji, Schwarz, and Nisbett(2000) have shown that Chinese relied less than Americanson the frequency scale presented along with questions whenreporting others’ observable behavior frequencies, suggest-ing that Chinese were more knowledgeable about others’ be-haviors and did not have to resort to the frequency scale foran estimate.

Cultural differences in emphasis on relationships are alsomanifested in people’s emotional experiences and subjectivewell-being. Given that East Asians are more likely thanEuro-North Americans to construe the self in terms of theirrelationships with others, it is not surprising that their rela-tionships with others play a stronger role in their emotionalexperiences. Kitayama, Markus, and Kurokawa (2000); andKitayama, Mesquita, and Karasawa (2006) investigatedsocially engaging and disengaging emotions across cultures.Socially engaging emotions are about themes related to inter-dependence and relationship harmony, such as friendly feel-ings when relationship harmony is achieved or guilt whenharmony is disrupted. Socially disengaging emotions areabout themes related to independence and personal goals,such as pride when independence is realized and anger whenindependence is challenged. Across different situations,Kitayama and colleagues found that Japanese experiencedmore socially engaging emotions than socially disengagingemotions, whereas Americans experienced more sociallydisengaging emotions than engaging emotions, reflectingJapanese culture’s emphasis on social interdependence andrelational harmony and American culture’s emphasis onindependence and autonomy. In addition, positive engagingemotions best predicted Japanese subjective well-being,whereas positive disengaging emotions best predictedAmericans’ subjective well-being. In relation to this,researchers have found that relative to self-esteem, relationalharmony has a greater impact on life satisfaction amongHong Kong Chinese than among Americans (Kwan, Bond,& Singelis, 1997). Thus, East Asians’ conceptions of subjec-tive well-being are more socially oriented compared withEuro-North Americans’. For East Asians, subjective well-being is achieved by fulfilling one’s role obligations ininterdependent relationships, creating and maintaining inter-personal harmony, and promoting collective (e.g., family)welfare and prosperity (Lu & Gilmour, 2004).

Cultural differences in relationship emphasis also emergein achievement motivation. North Americans tend to defineachievement or success as achieving goals motivated by theindividual’s own aspiration, whereas Chinese define achieve-ment as the realization of individual aspirations and gettingsocietal approval (Chang, Wong, & Teo, 2000). Indeed,socially oriented achievement motivation is more prominentthan individually oriented ones among Chinese. People strivefor externally defined goals and socially prescribed distinc-tion (Yu & Yang, 1994). Because of a greater emphasis oninterpersonal relationships than on self-directed accomplish-ments in collectivistic East Asian cultures (Kagitcibasi,

1994), relationships are very important to East Asians forconstruing the meaning of achievement.

Cultural differences in emphasis on relationships may alsobe observed in communication. Scollon and Scollon (1995)propose that the two main functions of communication, toconvey information and to maintain relationships betweenparticipants in the communication, are emphasized differ-ently in Western and Eastern cultures. Specifically, they sug-gest that Western cultures (e.g., the USA) place a high valueon the informational function of communication and rela-tively little value on the relational function of communica-tion, whereas Eastern cultures (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, andKorean) place more emphasis on the relational function ofcommunication and relatively less emphasis on the informa-tion function of communication (Scollon & Scollon, 1995,p. 138–140). Such cultural differences in the emphasis of in-formational versus relational functions of communicationcould guide the advice exchange process for people from dif-ferent cultural backgrounds.

Advice giving and takingAdvice exchange, such as advice giving and taking, involvesinteractions between different people, which may be affectedby cultural values and beliefs. Researchers have documentedthat other than its informational function, advice giving alsosatisfies the needs of the relational bond between advicegiver and advice receiver. For example, Morrow (2006) ana-lyzed the discourse features of advice giving from a linguisticperspective and found that advice giving was typically asso-ciated with expression of positive regard and solidarity, andtherefore served the purpose of maintaining a positive rela-tionship between advice giver and advice receiver. Giventhat cultures differ in their emphasis on relationship harmony(Fiske et al., 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis,1989), communication researchers postulate that differentcultural upbringings could also cultivate different under-standings of advice giving, and ultimately, different advice-giving behavior (Goldsmith & Fitch, 1997). Indeed, recentresearch has documented that the practice and understandingof advice giving vary substantially across cultures. For exam-ple, Chentsova-Dutton and Vaughn (2012) compared the fre-quencies and types of advice giving between Russians andEuro-Americans. They found that interdependent Russianswere more likely than independent Euro-Americans to viewadvice giving as supportive, and more likely to give unsolic-ited and practical advice to others. Likewise, in a recent com-parison between Chinese and Euro-Americans, Feng (2015)found that Chinese, compared with Euro-Americans,displayed a more favorable attitude toward advice givingand felt more obligated to help others through giving advice.In addition, people who display a high level of autonomy areless likely to take advice from others (Dalal & Bonaccio,2010; Koestner et al., 1999). In summary, the highlightedconcern for relational harmony among highly interdependentpeople encourages them to give unsolicited advice and toperceive advice giving positively. On the contrary, the con-cern for autonomy and independence among those fromindependent cultures precludes them from giving unsolicited

Culture and Advice Seeking 709L.-J. Ji et al.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30, 708–718 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/bdm

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advice and leads them to perceive unsolicited advice nega-tively (Chentsova-Dutton & Vaughn, 2012).

Advice seekingDespite plenty of research on advice giving and taking, thereis a dearth of research on advice seeking. In fact, researchershave just begun to explore factors that influence advice-seeking behaviors and consequences of seeking advice fromothers (Gino, Brooks, & Schweitzer, 2012; Liljenquist,2010). In one recent study, Gino et al. (2012) have shownthat state anxiety prompts people to seek advice from others.Liljenquist (2010) investigated the consequences of adviceseeking and found that seeking advice from others led tomultiple benefits in the workplace. For instance, she foundthat using advice seeking as a strategy of self-promotion,compared with other direct approaches of self-promotion, en-hanced the perceived warmth and sincerity of the adviceseeker without compromising their perceived competence.In another study in the same paper, she found that spontane-ous advice seeking by subordinates from their supervisorsduring a mock interview increased their perceived warmthand expected future performance. She also found that in ne-gotiation, seeking advice resulted in more creative and suc-cessful deal-making. These results suggest that adviceseeking can not only be used to achieve the goal of makingbetter decisions but can also be used to satisfy other goals,such as enhancing one’s perceived warmth. To date, how-ever, little is known about the underlying reasons that driveadvice-seeking behaviors and how advice seekers with dif-ferent reasons are perceived. The current research aims to fillthis gap by exploring the underlying reasons and interper-sonal consequences of advice-seeking behaviors from across-cultural perspective.

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENT RESEARCH

Given that East Asians value relationship harmony more thanEuropean North Americans whereas European NorthAmericans value independence and autonomy more thanEast Asians (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010), and giventhe different functions communication serves (Scollon &Scollon, 1995), we proposed that cultural differences wouldemerge in peoples’ advice-seeking behaviors. Specifically,we hypothesized that Euro-Canadians would be more likelythan Chinese to seek advice for problem-solving or informa-tional reasons (e.g., solving the problem at hand or seekingan alternative perspective) whereas Chinese would be morelikely than Euro-Canadians to seek advice for relational rea-sons (e.g., establishing, maintaining, or enhancing a relation-ship with the advice giver). This hypothesis was tested in fivestudies comparing East Asians (mainly Chinese) and Euro-Canadians: in Study 1A, we solicited advice-seeking experi-ences from participants, from both the advice seeker and ad-vice giver perspectives, and coded the reasons participantsoffered; in Study 1B, participants recalled and then ratedtheir own advice-seeking behavior for various reasons weprovided; Study 2A and Study 2B examined people’s choice

of and willingness to pay for informational versus relationaladvice when they were pitted against each other. In addition,we conducted Study 3 to explore how someone seeking ad-vice for different reasons was perceived by the advice giver.

STUDY 1A

Study 1A explored the diverse reasons for advice seekingamong Euro-Canadians and Chinese. Participants were askedto describe a past instance of advice seeking and a pastinstance of advice giving. After each instance, they wereasked to list as many reasons as possible for advice seekingin that instance. By eliciting the reasons for advice seekingin an open-ended format from both the advice seeker and ad-vice giver’s perspective, this design enabled us to obtain athorough understanding of the reasons for advice seeking.

METHOD

ParticipantsEighty Euro-Canadian students (62 women, 18 men,Mage = 18.25, SD=1.1) at a Canadian university and 56 Chi-nese students (42 women, 14 men, Mage = 19.48, SD= .89) ata Chinese University participated in Study 1A. Euro-Canadians received course credit and Chinese participants re-ceived a small gift for their participation.

ProcedureParticipants were given a questionnaire, which defined ad-vice as “an opinion about what could or should be doneabout a situation or problem.” Participants were then askedto recall and write down one of their recent advice-seekingexperiences in detail. Next, they were asked to list as manyreasons as possible that motivated them to seek advice fromothers.

On the next page, participants recalled and described onerecent instance in which another person sought advice fromthem and listed as many reasons as possible for the person’sadvice-seeking behavior. The order of writing one’s ownadvice-seeking experience and another person’s advice-seeking experience was counterbalanced. Lastly, participantsreported demographics such as gender, age and ethnicity.The study was conducted in English in Canada, and in Chi-nese in China. The study material was originally created inEnglish and translated into Chinese by two bilingual re-searchers to ensure its equivalence (the same translation pro-cedure was followed in Studies 2 and 3).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the reasons participants reported, we developed acoding scheme to categorize the open-ended responses intothree broad categories: information seeking (e.g., to obtaininformation, to solve the problem at hand, to get an alterna-tive perspective, or to confirm one’s own decision),

710 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30, 708–718 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/bdm

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relationship building with the advice giver (e.g., to establish,maintain or improve relationship, or to seek approval orunderstanding), and other (none of the above) (Note 1). Fourresearch assistants (two Euro-Canadians and two Chinese-English bilinguals) blind to the research hypotheses codedall the reasons participants listed. Inter-coder agreementwas 93.45% for the Euro-Canadian sample and 88.20% forthe Chinese sample. Disagreements were resolved throughdiscussion. We then computed the frequency of different rea-sons listed by each participant.

Euro-Canadian participants (M=8.76, SD=2.79) on aver-age listed more reasons than Chinese participants did(M=5.60, SD=1.98), t(134) =7.37, p< .001. As such a dif-ference may be the result of other variables of no interest tothe present study (such as Euro-Canadians being more moti-vated, or more operative than Chinese to list reasons), we de-cided to examine the relative frequencies of informationalversus relational reasons by using the percentage of the typesof reasons for seeking advice within each participant, withineach perspective (as an advice seeker versus an advice giver),as the dependent variable in the following analyses. Forexample, within each perspective, the percentage of informa-tional reasons was computed by dividing the frequency of in-formational reasons by the total frequency of reasonsprovided by the participant (including informational reasons,relational reasons, and others). A 2 (Culture: Euro-Canadiansversus Chinese) × 2 (Perspective: Advice seeker versus Ad-vice giver) × 2 (Reason Type: Informational versus Rela-tional) repeated measure analysis of covariance(ANCOVA) with the latter two variables as within-subjectvariables, percentage of reasons as the dependent variable,and gender as the covariate revealed a main effect of ReasonType, F(1,126) = 16.23, p< .001, η2p = .114, a marginal effectof gender, F(1, 126) = 3.71, p= .056, η2p = .029, and a signifi-cant interaction between Culture and Reason Type, F(1,126)=10.41, p= .002, η2p = .076. No other effects approached sta-tistical significance, Fs<1.19, ps> .27. To understand theinteraction effect between Culture and Reason Type, simpleeffect analyses indicated that Euro-Canadians (estimatedmarginal Mean= .57, SE= .03) reported a higher percentageof informational reasons for advice seeking than did Chinese

(estimated marginal Mean= .46, SE= .04), F(1, 126) = 6.58,p= .011, η2p = .05, whereas Chinese (estimated marginalMean= .14, SE= .02) reported a significantly higher percent-age of relational reasons than did Euro-Canadians (estimatedmarginal Mean= .06, SE= .02), F(1, 126) = 9.64, p= .002, η2p= .07 (Figure 1). In general, both Euro-Canadians and Chi-nese were more likely to seek advice for informational thanrelational reasons. Furthermore, in line with our hypotheses,Euro-Canadians were more likely than Chinese to seek ad-vice for informational reasons, whereas Chinese were morelikely than Euro-Canadians to seek advice for relationalreasons.

STUDY 1B

Using a more structured questionnaire, Study 1B attemptedto replicate Study 1A’s results by comparing Euro-Canadians’ and East Asians’ reasons for advice seeking. Par-ticipants wrote about a recent advice-seeking experience andthen evaluated to what extent they sought advice for variousgiven reasons.

METHOD

ParticipantsForty Euro-Canadian students (30 women, 10 men,Mage = 18.03 years, SD= .97) and 39 East Asian students(26 women and 13 men, Mage =19.51, SD=2.33) at a Cana-dian university participated in the study. The East Asian sam-ple consisted mainly of Chinese students (n=30), Koreans(n=3), Japanese (n=1), and five others who identified them-selves as “East Asians” (Note 2). All participants receivedcourse credit for their participation. The study was conductedin English.

PROCEDURE

Participants were first given the same definition of advice asin Study 1A. Then, they were asked to recall and briefly de-scribe one instance in which they sought advice from others.After describing the instance, participants rated the extent towhich they sought advice for the following reasons on a 7-point scale (1=not at all, 7=very much): to get information,to show respect (to the advice giver), to seek an alternate per-spective, to establish a connection (with the advice giver), tosolve the problem at hand, to maintain relationship (with theadvice giver), and to confirm their own view (in this order).Lastly, participants reported demographics such as gender,age, and ethnicity.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The seven items were intended to measure relational reasons(Cronbach’s alpha = .84) and informational reasons(Cronbach’s alpha = .46) for advice seeking, respectively. Al-though the reliability of the four items measuring

Figure 1. Estimated marginal means for the percentage of informa-tional versus relational reasons of advice seeking (Study 1A). Errorbars represent ±1 standard errors. [Colour figure can be viewed at

wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Culture and Advice Seeking 711L.-J. Ji et al.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30, 708–718 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/bdm

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informational reasons was low, exploratory factor analysisusing principal axis factoring revealed that the items usedto assess advice-seeking reasons clustered on the two ex-pected factors: relational reasons (“to show respect”, “to es-tablish a connection”, and “to maintain relationship”), andinformational reasons (“to get information”, “to solve theproblem at hand,” “to get an alternative perspective”, and“to confirm one’s own view”). All the item loadings for theirrespective category were greater than .32. This two-factormodel explained 54.93% of the variance. We then calculateda composite score for each type of advice-seeking reasons byaveraging responses to the items under each type of reasons.

A 2 (Culture: Euro-Canadians versus East Asian) × 2(Reason Type: Informational versus Relational) repeatedmeasure ANCOVA on the rating of advice-seeking reasonscontrolling for gender revealed no significant main effect ofCulture, F(1, 76) = 0.18, or gender, F(1, 76) = 0.55, but a sig-nificant main effect of Reason Type, F(1, 76) = 11.86,p= .001, η2p = .14, which was qualified by a significant inter-action effect between Culture and Reason Type, F(1, 76)= 12.35, p= .001, η2p = .14. No other effects approached statis-tical significance, Fs< .71, ps> .40. Simple effect analysesindicated that Euro-Canadians (estimated marginalMean=5.82, SE= .15) were more likely than East Asians(M=5.19, SE= .15) to seek advice for informational reasons,F(1, 76) = 9.18, p= .003, η2p = .011. In contrast, East Asians(estimated marginal Mean=3.81, SE= .27) were more likelythan Euro-Canadians (estimated marginal Mean=2.99,SE= .27) to seek advice for relational reasons, F(1, 76)= 4.59, p= .035, η2p = .06 (Figure 2).

In summary, based on open-ended responses to reasonsfor advice seeking from both the advice seeker and advicegiver’s perspectives (Study 1A) and rating of various reasonsfor advice seeking during a recent experience (Study 1B),across different samples (Chinese in China in Study 1A andEast Asians in Canada in Study 1B), we consistently foundthat people’s reasons for advice seeking differed relativelyacross cultures: Euro-Canadians were more likely than EastAsians to seek advice for informational reasons, whereasEast Asians were more likely than Euro-Canadians to seekadvice for relational reasons (although both East Asiansand Euro-Canadians were more likely to seek advice forinformational than for relational reasons).

STUDY 2A

Study 2A further tested cultural differences in advice seekingby pitting relationship against information in a decision di-lemma. We hypothesized that Chinese would be more likelythan Euro-Canadians to choose relationship overinformation.

METHOD

ParticipantsSeventy-seven Euro-Canadians students at a Canadian Uni-versity (54 women, 22 men, and 1 person who did not reportgender, Mage=18.36, SD= .65) and 83 Chinese students at aChinese University (39 women, 43 men, and 1 person whodid not report gender; Mage=19.45, SD=1.41) participatedin the study. Euro-Canadians received course credit and Chi-nese participants received a small gift for their participation.

Material and procedureParticipants firstly imagined the following situation: Theywere deciding which of two universities to apply to for grad-uate studies. A decision had to be made by the end of day asthe applications were due the next day. Then participantsread about two potential advisors from whom they couldseek advice:

You are scheduled to meet Person A today for advice.Person A has some information about both universities,but has never attended either himself. Person A knew yourDad from a long time ago, and they were reconnected re-cently because your Dad asked Person A to give yousome university advice. Person A happily agreed.

As you are about to leave for your meeting with Person A,your friend tells you that Person B, who attended one ofthe universities and worked at the other, is meeting somestudents in the department right now to give them first-hand information about both universities.

Thus, person A represented an advisor based on relation-ship who might also provide future relational benefits,whereas person B represented an advisor with more first-hand information. Participants had to decide which personto meet, as they could meet one person only due to the lim-ited time they had. They indicated how likely they wouldmeet Person A or Person B on an 8-point scale (1=most def-initely Person A, 8 =most definitely Person B) and briefly ex-plained why.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Both Chinese and Euro-Canadians displayed a preference forseeking advice from the informational advisor (persons B),as their mean responses were significantly above the mid-point (4.5) on the 8-point scale, ts>3.11, ps<= .003. An

Figure 2. Estimated marginal means for ratings of reasons for adviceseeking (Study 1B). Error bars represent ±1 standard errors. [Colour

figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

712 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Behav. Dec. Making, 30, 708–718 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/bdm

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ANCOVA analysis with gender as a covariate indicated thatChinese participants (estimated marginal Mean=5.32,SE= .25) were marginally more likely to meet Person A—the relational advisor (or less likely to meet person B—theinformational advisor)—than Euro-Canadian participants(estimated marginal Mean=6.00, SE= .26), F(1, 155)=3.45, p= .065, η2p = .022.

Two bilingual coders, blind to the research hypothesis,coded the reasons that participants provided for their choiceof advice seeking. Specifically, the reasons were coded intothe following categories: information (choosing the personwith better information, more information, or more reliableor objective information), relationship (choosing the personto not hurt their relationship with their Dad, or the relation-ship between their Dad and the person), compromise(acknowledging the importance of meeting both persons,and find a compromise solution, for example, having Dadmeet person A while one meets B, or meeting person Aand getting information shared by person B from friends),personal attention (choosing the person because he/she caresabout me, or pays more attention to my situation), and other(none of the above). Each participant’s response may becoded into multiple categories. Inter-coder agreement is98.8% for Euro-Canadians and 98.4% for Chinese. Note inthis study that relationship is defined more broadly (beyondjust the relationship between the advice seeker and giver).As Chinese people emphasize social relationship in general(Kwan et al., 1997), we expected them to show generalconcerns for social relationship in seeking advice.

As shown in Table 1, Euro-Canadians (n=64, 83.1%)were more likely than Chinese (n=56, 67.5%) to explaintheir choice in terms of getting better information, x2 (1)= 5.22, p= .022, whereas Chinese (36, 43.4%) were morelikely than Euro-Canadians (n=18, 23.4%) to base theirdecision on relationship, x2 (1) = 7.14, p= .008. In addition,Chinese (n=21, 25.3%) were also more likely than Euro-Canadians (n=7, 9.1%) to propose a compromise solution,x2 (1) = 7.27, p= .007. Chinese (n=8, 9.6%) were more likelythan Euro-Canadians (n=1, 1.3%) to mention personalattention/care as the reason for their decision, x2 (1) = 5.23,p= .022.

Together with the rating response, these open-endedexplanations indicated that, although obtaining good infor-mation was a predominant concern for both Euro-Canadiansand Chinese, relative to Euro-Canadians, Chinese concerned

less about the quality of information but more about socialrelationship in general.

STUDY 2B

Study 2B examined how much people were willing pay inorder to seek advice for informational or relational gains. Be-cause of the great difficulty in equating currency amountsacross countries, as well as differential purchase powers as-sociated with different currencies, we decided to test the will-ingness to pay with a game currency, which is more likelyconsidered equivalent across countries.

ParticipantsSeventy-seven Euro-Canadian students (54 women, 22 men,and 1 person who did not report gender, Mage=18.36,SD= .65) at a Canadian university and 81 Chinese studentsat a Chinese university (45 women, 36 men; Mage=21.16,SD= .91) participated in the study.

Material and procedureParticipants were asked to imagine themselves playing acomputer game that they wanted very much to win. Thenthey were faced a serious situation with two options in thegame:

Option 1: Talking to Person M for advice, who has infor-mation of good quality. But this will not help you gain arelationship, which could be useful later in the game.

Option 2: Talking to Person N for advice, whose informa-tion quality is lower. Talking to Person N will allow youto form an important relationship, which could be usefullater in the game.

As there were few reasons for people to seek relationshipin a game, in order to avoid a floor effect, we tried to makethe relationship option appealing to participants by addingsome instrumental value (“could be useful later in the game”)to it.

Participants learned that asking either person for advicewould cost them power (HP) in the game. Then, they

Table 1. Reasons for choosing which advisor to seek advice from

Category

Chinese (n= 83)Euro-Canadians

(n= 77)

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

Information: choose the person who can provide better or more information 56 67.5 64 83.1Relationship: choose the person so that they would not hurt their relationship with theirDad, or relationship between their Dad and the person

36 43.4 18 23.4

Compromise: acknowledge the importance of meeting both person, and find acompromise solution (e.g., have Dad meet A)

21 25.3 7 9.1

Personal attention (the person cares about me, devotes attention to me) 8 9.6 1 1.3Other (none of the above) 5 6.0 2 2.6

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indicated the amount of HP (between 0 and 100) they werewilling to pay in order to get advice from Person M(the informational advisor) or N (the relational advisor).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A 2 (Culture: Euro-Canadians versus Chinese) × 2 (Type ofadvisor: Informational versus Relational) ANCOVA analy-sis with gender as a covariate revealed no significant inter-action effect between culture and type of advisor, F(1,154) = 1.33, p= .25. But as we had an a priori hypothesis,we conducted simple effect analyses and found thatChinese (estimated marginal Mean=51.68, SE=2.36) werewilling to pay more to gain relationship than Euro-Canadians (estimated marginal Mean=44.65, SE=2.44),F(1, 154) = 4.23 p= .041. Chinese (estimated marginalMean=39.57, SE=2.26) and Euro-Canadians (estimatedmarginal Mean=37.30, SE=2.33) did not differ in theamounts of HP they were willing to pay in order to getadvice from M, the information holder, F(1, 154) = .49,p= .486. These results suggested that, although there wasno cultural difference in willingness to pay for information,Chinese were willing to pay a higher price to build rela-tionship with the advisor than were Euro-Canadians.

STUDY 3

Following from Studies 1 and 2, which documented cul-tural differences in reasons for advice seeking and inemphasis placed on relational advice seeking, Study 3explored how advice seekers with different reasons forseeking advice are perceived. We predicted that Chinesewould be more likely than Euro-Canadians to perceiverelational advice seeking more positively. We did not havea particular prediction about how Chinese and Euro-Canadians would differ in their perception of information-based advice seeking, given that information or problemsolving is the most common reason for people to seekadvice across cultures.

METHOD

ParticipantsNinety-eight Euro-Canadians (including 75 women, 11 men,and 12 other participants who did not report age and genderinformation, Mage = 21.06, SD=5.41) at a Canadian univer-sity and 97 Chinese students (including 76 women, 19men, and 2 other participants who did not report genderinformation, Mage = 20.26, SD= .76) from a Chinese univer-sity participated in Study 3. Euro-Canadians received $5,whereas Chinese received a small gift for their participation.The study was conducted in English in Canada and inChinese in China.

ProcedureParticipants were randomly assigned to one of two condi-tions, in which they read a diary describing a student’s rea-sons for seeking advice from her classmate. The diaryemphasized either gaining information or maintaining a rela-tionship as the main reason for advice seeking. Specifically,participants read about Sarah, a third year university student,who had been offered an internship at a big company and had2weeks to make a decision. Sarah was interested in the offer,but wanted to seek advice from Emily, her classmate. Shewrote in her diary,

……I will talk to Emily tomorrow about whether I shouldaccept the offer for the internship position at this largecompany. I want to seek Emily’s advice because I wantto get more information about the internship and get herto help me make the right decision… (Informationcondition)

The diary looked the same in the relationship maintenancecondition except that the last sentence in the diary was re-placed with,

I want to seek Emily’s advice because this will provide mewith the opportunity to share my feelings about the intern-ship offer and make us better friends… (Relationshipcondition)

After reading the scenario, participants estimated howmuch more or less competent Emily would perceive Sarahto be after the advice-seeking incident, on a scale from �5(much less competent) to +5 (much more competent), andhow much more estranged or closer Emily would feel to Sa-rah on a scale from �5 (much more estranged) to +5 (muchcloser). Lastly, participants reported demographics such asgender, age, and ethnicity.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A 2 (Culture: Euro-Canadians versus Chinese) × 2 (ReasonType: information versus relationship maintenance) × 2(Change in Perception: competence versus relational close-ness) repeated measure ANOVA with the first two variablesas between-subject factors and the latter variable as a within-subject factor revealed a significant main effect of Change inPerception, F (1, 191) = 73.44, p< .001,η2p= .28, a significanttwo-way interaction between Reason and Change in Percep-tion, F(1,191) = 7.22, p= .008, η2p = .04, and a significantthree-way interaction among Culture, Reason Type, andChange in Perception, F(1, 191) =16.27, p< .001, η2p = .08.No other effects approached statistical significance,Fs<2.40, ps> .12.1 To better understand the three-way

1Controlling for gender produced similar patterns of results. However, be-cause a large number of participants (n = 14) did not report gender, control-ling for gender reduced the power of the study and resulted in some trendy ormarginal effects.

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interaction effect, we conducted subsequent analyses onchanges in perceived competence and in perceived relationalcloseness separately.

Change in Competence Perception. A 2 (Culture: Euro-Canadians versus Chinese) × 2 (Reason Type: informationalversus relationship maintenance) ANOVA with change incompetence perception as the dependent variable revealed asignificant main effect of Culture, F(1, 191) = 4.40,p= .037, η2p = .02, but no main effect of Reason Type, F(1,191) = .986, p= .322. The interaction effect between Cul-ture and Reason was marginally significant, F(1, 191)=3.04, p= .083, η2p = .02. Further simple effect analyses indi-cated that in the relationship maintenance condition, Chinese(M=1.52, SD=1.56) expected the advice giver to perceivethe advice seeker as much more competent than did Euro-Canadians (M= .49, SD=2.08), t(107) = 2.88, p= .005,d= .56, whereas Chinese (M= .79, SD=2.15) and Euro-Canadians (M= .69, SD=1.38) did not differ in the informa-tion condition, t(84) = .24, p= .81 (Figure 3). Within eachculture, simple effect analyses showed that Chinese expecteda more positive change in competence perception in the rela-tionship condition than in the information condition, t(95)= 1.93, p= .05, d= .39, whereas Euro-Canadians did not dif-fer between the two conditions, t(96) = .53, p= .60. Asrelationship-oriented advice seeking is relatively more fre-quent and congruent with the emphasis on relationship har-mony in the Chinese culture, using advice seeking as astrategy for enhancing a relationship may be perceived as amanifestation of culturally appropriate competence. There-fore, seeking advice for relational reasons actually enhancedperceived competence of the advice seeker among Chinese.

Change in relational closeness perception. A 2 (culture:Euro-Canadians versus Chinese) × 2 (Reason Type: informa-tion versus relationship maintenance) ANOVA with changein relational closeness perception as the dependent variablerevealed no significant main effect of Culture, F(1, 191)= .30, p= .585, nor main effect of Reason Type, F(1, 191)=2.42, p= .121, but a significant interaction between Cultureand Reason Type, F(1, 191) =4.41, p= .037, η2p = .02(Figure 4). Simple effects analyses indicated that in the infor-mation condition, Chinese participants (M=2.60, SD=1.72)anticipated a more positive change in relationship closenessthan did Euro-Canadians (M=1.85, SD=1.57), t(84) = 2.10,p= .039, d= .46. However, no cultural difference was found

among participants in the relationship maintenance condi-tion, t(107) = 1.06, p= .29 (as seen in Figure 4). Within-cultural comparisons showed that Chinese anticipated a morepositive change in relationship closeness in the informationcondition (M=2.60, SD=1.72) than in the relationship con-dition (M=1.56, SD=2.05), t(95) = 2.69, p= .008, d= .55.Euro-Canadians, on the other hand, did not differ across con-ditions, t(96) = .37, p= .712. Among Chinese participants, itis counterintuitive that relationship-motivated advice seekingdid not bring about more relational gains than problem-driven advice seeking did. One possibility is that seeking ad-vice for informational purposes may be more flattering toChinese than to Euro-Canadians, as being sought for advicemay be an indication of being respected, approved, or ad-mired, which is more important to people who value socialrelationships (such as Chinese) than those who do not valuesocial relationship as much (such as Euro-Canadians). In re-ality, however, people cannot be absolutely sure about thereasons underlying advice seeking, and therefore, seekingadvice for relational gains might work out better in real life.More research is needed to examine the replicability of theseresults in lab and real-life settings.

It is worth noting that both Euro-Canadians and Chineseexpected positive changes in competence and closeness per-ceptions, regardless of the reasons for advice seeking. All cellmeans were significantly greater than 0, ts> 5.74, ps< .001.This indicates that, at least for the current advice seeking sce-nario, seeking advice was expected to strengthen perceivedcompetence of the advice seeker and the relationshipcloseness between the advice seeker and the advice giver.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Across five studies, we explored reasons for advice seekingand the interpersonal consequences of seeking advice acrosscultures. Studies 1A and 1B found that, compared with Euro-Canadians, East Asians (mainly Chinese) were less likely toseek advice for informational reasons and more likely to seekadvice for relational reasons. Study 2A demonstrated thatChinese placed more value on relationship concerns in gen-eral when deciding from whom to seek advice. Study 2B pro-vided further evidence that Chinese were willing to pay a

Figure 3. Perception of competence change after advice-seeking(Study 3). Error bars represent ±1 standard errors. [Colour figure

can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Figure 4. Perception of closeness change after advice-seeking(Study 3). Error bars represent ±1 standard errors. [Colour figure

can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

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higher price for relational advice than were Euro-Canadians.Furthermore, Study 3 demonstrated that people seekingadvice for relational reasons increased their perceived com-petence among Chinese more than among Euro-Canadiansand that people seeking advice for informational reasonsenhanced relationship closeness between the advice seekerand the prospective advice giver among Chinese more thanamong Euro-Canadians.

The current research enriches our understanding ofadvice-seeking behaviors. Previous research on advice seek-ing has focused on factors that influence advice-seekingbehavior such as anxiety (Gino et al., 2012), and organiza-tional dynamics (Heyden et al., 2013). However, little isknown about the underlying reasons that drive advice-seeking behaviors. To our knowledge, the current researchis the first to explore the reasons for advice seeking from across-cultural perspective. As one of the most basic practicesin making real-life decisions, advice seeking is assumed to beprimarily driven by informational reasons (Bonaccio &Dalal, 2006; Yaniv & Kleinberger, 2000). The current re-search verifies that informational reasons are indeed one ofthe primary reasons for advice seeking among both Euro-Canadians and East Asians (mainly Chinese). Meanwhile,the current research also demonstrates that people may seekadvice for relational purposes, such as to establish, maintain,or improve one’s relationship with the advice giver. The ten-dency to seek advice for relational purposes is strongeramong East Asians than among Euro-Canadians. Indeed,Chinese are willing to pay a higher price for relational adviceseeking, and are more likely than Euro-Canadians to chooserelational advice seeking in a decision dilemma when infor-mational and relational advice seeking cannot be achievedsimultaneously. This is consistent with the greater emphasison relational maintenance and harmony among East Asiansthan among European North Americans (Fiske et al., 1998;Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1989). Therefore, fu-ture research on advice seeking should not simply treat it asinformational but also take its relational facet into consider-ation, especially among East Asians.

By highlighting the various reasons that drive advice-seeking behavior, the current research has implications foradvice giving and advice taking. Depending on whether theadvice seeker is seeking advice to solve a problem or main-tain the relationship, it would be more efficient for the advicegiver to respond in one way rather than another. For exam-ple, if the advice giver can accurately perceive that someoneis seeking advice for relational rather than informational rea-sons, he/she may pay more attention to the advice exchangeprocess than the advice per se, because the process of adviceexchange is more important for interpersonal relationshipsthan the advice itself. This makes advice giving a compli-cated task for the advice giver as he/she needs to considerthe potential explicit and implicit reasons for advice seekingwhen deciding how to give advice. If there is a mismatch be-tween the reason for seeking advice and the advice-givingprocess, the efficiency of the advice exchange may be re-duced in the short term and this may hinder the maintenanceof the advisor–advisee relationship in the long run. This willbe especially relevant to advisors working in a multicultural

environment, who should take different reasons behindadvice seeking into account when deciding how to givesound advice to people with different cultural backgrounds.

The present research shows that seeking advice can haveinterpersonal benefits for the advice seeker. This is in linewith Liljenquist’s finding that advice seeking can be usedto enhance one’s perceived warmth without compromisingone’s competence in the eyes of the advisor (Liljenquist,2010). The relational benefits of seeking advice also echothe “Ben Franklin Effect”—people like others more afterdoing them a favor (Jecker & Landy, 1969). As doing some-one a favor is often an expression of esteem, being asked foradvice may be perceived as an indication of one’s expertiseor reputation. For this reason, asking someone for adviceshows one’s respect for and acknowledgement of the otherperson’s competence, likely resulting in positive interper-sonal outcomes.

Liljenquist (2010) documents the underuse of adviceseeking as a strategy of impression management amongEuro-Americans, which may be due to Euro-Americans’concerns of signaling their weakness and dependencethrough advice seeking, or because of their preference fordirect communication. As the current research suggests,however, seeking advice may actually bring both NorthAmericans and East Asians unexpected interpersonal bene-fits. Future research on group and organizational behaviorcould explore if encouraging advice-seeking behaviorsamong group members would enhance team performance,group solidarity, and in turn, bring about positive organiza-tional change in the long run.

The present finding that East Asians are more likely thanEuro-Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons echoeswith other researchers’ work on advice giving in interdepen-dent versus independent cultures (e.g., Chentsova-Dutton &Vaughn, 2012; Feng, 2015), providing a complete pictureof the dynamic process of advice exchange. Overall, com-pared with people from independent cultures, people frominterdependent cultures are more likely to seek advice forrelational gains, to give advice for relational reasons, and toperceive advice giving more positively. Correspondingly,the present research also suggests that East Asians (mainlyChinese) are more likely than Euro-Canadians to value,appreciate and harvest the interpersonal benefits of adviceseeking. Indeed, Chinese perceive those who seek advicefor relational reasons as more competent and those who seekadvice for informational reasons as having a closer relation-ship, compared with Euro-Canadians. Thus, seeking advicemay be a more common and efficient strategy for relationshipinitiation and binding among East Asians than among NorthAmericans, which has potential implications for effectivecommunication and interactions among team members fromdiverse cultural backgrounds.

In conclusion, the present research has shown that Euro-Canadians are more likely than Chinese to seek advice for in-formational reasons whereas Chinese are more likely thanEuro-Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons. Com-pared with Euro-Canadians, Chinese show more relationshipconcerns when deciding from whom to seek advice in a deci-sion dilemma, and are willing to pay more for building a

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relationship with the advisor. In addition, advice seeking canincrease perceived competence or relationship closeness, de-pending on culture and reasons for advice seeking. Future re-search should explore these issues further to betterunderstand the dynamic processes of advice exchange andto provide insights for better practices, especially in across-cultural setting.

NOTES

1 The “Other” category included subcategories that are not ofparticular interest to the present research, such as advicegiver’s traits (“because he was knowledgeable”), personalneed (“because I need to talk to someone about it”),responsibility diffusion (“I hope someone else will sharethe responsibility for the decision”), and other purposes(e.g., asking a roommate about the clothes they wear, in or-der to find an excuse for shopping). Euro-Canadians(M= .28, SD= .22) and Chinese (M= .30, SD= .23) didnot differ on this “other” category, t(134) =�.64, p= .52.

2 Because of the difficulty of recruiting East Asian partici-pants at the local Canadian university, the sample sizewas relatively smaller in Study 1B than in the other studies.

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Authors’ biographies:

Li-Jun Ji is an Associate Professor in social psychology atQueen’s University. Her research focuses on culture and cog-nition, judgment, and decision making.

Ning Zhang is a PhD student in social psychology atQueen’s University. His research focuses on culture differ-ences in cognition and judgment and decision making.

Ye Li is a Professor in psychology at Central China NormalUniversity. Her research interests lie in social and organiza-tional behaviors.

Zhiyong Zhang is an Associate Professor in social psychol-ogy at Beijing University. His research interests include or-ganizational behavior and human decision processes.

Gillian Harper received her undergraduate degree in psy-chology from Queen’s University and is currently a graduatestudent at Adler School of Professional Psychology.

Mark Khei is a PhD student in social psychology at Queen’sUniversity. His research focuses on cultural differences injudgment and decision making.

Jie Li is an Associate Professor in social psychology at InnerMongolia Normal University. Her research focuses on lan-guage and cognition.

Authors’ addresses:

Li-Jun Ji, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Ning Zhang, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Ye Li, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China.

Zhiyong Zhang, Beijing University, Beijing, China.

Gillian Harper, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Mark Khei, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.

Jie Li, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot, China.

718 Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

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DOI: 10.1002/bdm

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