Abstract:

Advice, given or taken, is vital in decision-making processes and social interactions. An individual can either exert one’s influence on others with advice, or use others’ advice to enable effective decision-making. Given the importance of behaviors related to advice, it has become critical for scholars to investigate their antecedents. However, previous studies have focused largely on advice taking rather than advice giving, which is equally vital.
To fill this gap, the current study, inspired by eye effects, seeks to explore the relationship between advice-seekers’ gaze direction and advisors’ willingness to give advice, as well as the mechanism underlying this relationship. Drawing from Signaling Theory, we examined the effect of advice-seekers’ gaze direction on advisors’ advice giving, as well as the process linking them. We focused on the mediating effect of perceived role expectation and on the moderating effect of rejection sensitivity.
Three experiments with different decision making scenarios were conducted to test the hypotheses. The advice-seekers’ gaze direction (direct vs. averted) was manipulated using same images of faces (3 models, 2 males and 1 female) in three experiments. Experiment 1 employed an undergraduate’ career decision-making scenario to examine the direct effect of advice-seekers’ gaze direction on advisors’ willingness of giving advice, as well as the mediating effect of perceived role expectation. A total of 102 university students were recruited for this experiment (39 males; mean age 23.76 ± 4.39 years), and were randomly divided into two groups (direct vs. averted). The experiment 2 adopted a 2 (gaze direction: direct vs. averted) × 2 (rejection sensitivity: high vs. low) between-subject design to examine the moderating effect of rejection sensitivity with an undergraduate’ decision-making scenario in daily study life. A total of 318 undergraduates were recruited (155 males; mean age 21.74 ± 1.49 years). Using the tendency to expect rejection scale (TERS), we deployed 86 participants (35 males) who scored in the top 27% in the high rejection sensitivity group and 86 participants (36 males) who scored in the bottom 27% in the low rejection sensitivity group. The experiment 3 employed a job-related decision making scenario in an organization to examine the full model (a moderated mediation model). A total of 198 full-time employees were recruited (88 males; mean age 31.20 ± 5.06 years).
The results of the three experiments showed that: (1) advice-seeker's gaze direction directly influenced the advisors’ willingness to give advice. When the advice-seeker's gaze direction was direct rather than averted, advisors were more willing to give advice; (2) perceived role expectation mediated the relationship between advice-seeker's gaze direction and advisors’ willingness to give advice; (3) advisors’ rejection sensitivity moderated the relationship between advice-seeker's gaze direction and advisors’ willingness to give advice, as well as the indirect relationship of advice seeker's gaze direction to advisors’ willingness to give advice through perceived role expectation. When the advisor's rejection sensitivity was high, seeker's direct gaze direction had a stronger effect on the advisors’ willingness to give advice, as well as on the indirect effect mentioned above. These findings contribute to our understandings of how to help advisors to give advice, and add to the research on eye effects as well.

Key words: gaze direction, advice-giving, perceived role expectation, rejection sensitivity, signaling theory