Solomon’s Paradox

Why are we better at giving advice to others than ourselves?

Welcome!

People are wiser when reasoning about others’ problems than when reasoning about their own problems. In addition, our results demonstrate that self-distancing reduces this asymmetry in wise reasoning.

Remember the times that a friend or loved one was struggling with a problem, yet the path they needed to take was obvious? Certainly, we may be missing some factor that is complicating the decision, but there is research indicating that the brain is better at solving other people’s problems than it is at solving our own. The greater our self interest in the problem, the poorer the advice to ourselves becomes.

A couple of weeks ago my daughter called telling me that she was at the veterinary hospital with her adorable and extremely loved cat, Henry. She had picked him up and noticed that a paw was cold. While Henry was being examined she called me and I drove to the hospital for support. The doctor came back with bad news — Henry’s heart wasn’t functioning properly and it was causing blood clots that had affected the blood flow to his paw.

The doctor advised her that the only medical treatment available was 70 miles away at a veterinary college. The cost could be as much as $7000 and, if the surgery was successful, the prognosis still wasn’t going to be good. My daughter was overwhelmed with emotion and asked me what she should do.

You may be thinking that I told her what to do and then the decision was made. No, I did not. My making the decision for her would weaken her agency in the situation and could result in long term regrets. What I did tell her is that she should imagine a friend who was in the same situation and ask herself what advice she would give.

After a few quiet minutes, and much crying, my daughter made the compassionate decision to say goodbye. With the decision made, the doctor let my daughter know that she used to do these surgeries and that, in her experience, the right decision was made for Henry.

Just as we are often better at giving advice to others than ourselves. We are better at giving ourselves advice if we self-distance by imagining what advice we would give a friend. This works remarkably well.

More broadly, our findings suggest that decision making about assigning individuals to advisory roles in domains that involve social dilemmas (e.g., management, intergroup negotiations) may benefit from considering whether the decision makers’ and possible advisors’ self- interests are involved. If so, their reasoning may be biased. Self-interests are often unavoidable; people regularly make decisions about situations in which they have personal stakes (e.g., business negotiations, relationship transactions, or health-related decisions). The current findings, in conjunction with prior research (Kross & Grossmann, 2012), suggest that self-distancing may provide people with a tool to enhance wise reasoning under such consequential circumstances.

This also applies to business. The more self-interest the advice giver has (career prospects, promotions, career risk, etc.) the lower the quality of advice on average. Business owners often have business friends they talk with about business problem, but line managers may not have professional peers outside of coworkers that they can go to for advice (and in many business cultures doing so would be seen as violating the confidentiality expectations).

This problem is compounded in business cultures where employees can expect to their career prospects to be harmed by their mistakes. Instead of seeking advice, they hide problems and blame others to protect themselves. Expecting perfection from employees actually increases errors and their negative effects on the organization.

Finale

Don’t let pride prevent you from seeking the advice of others; whether it be from friends, therapists, or peers. If you are in a leadership role, create a culture where others don’t fear consequence for seeking second opinions or for making normal human mistakes. When your path is uncertain and you don’t have a reliable and knowledgeable person to rely on for advice , you can always ask yourself what you would tell a friend in the same situation.

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Your friend,

DJ