The Big Picture or Details : Effect of Construal Levels and the Expertise Evaluations of Advice

Consumers’ decisions are often influenced by advice they receive from others. However, not all advice is considered helpful to consumers. The present research suggests that the level of construal at which the advice is represented can shape how people evaluate other’s advice. With one experiment and two secondary datasets (Yelp and University teaching evaluations), we show that people evaluate advice more positively when the advice is represented at lower (vs. higher) construal levels. We show that this effect holds when the advisor’s expertise is low. When the advisor’s expertise is important and high, we find that people evaluate higher (vs. lower) construal advice more positively.