Abstract: When facing a decision, people often rely on others’ advice. In the past two decades, research on advice taking has investigated how people take and use advice to make decisions. Specifically, three issues have been addressed: (a) the extent of advice-taking, (b) improvement in decision accuracy, and (c) confidence of both advisor and judge. This article first introduces the Judge-advisor system paradigm, and then summarizes the measurement and empirical results regarding the above three issues. It is suggested that future research should enrich the content of “advice”, pay more attention to “advisors”, extend the scope to decisions of taste, and explore the role that emotions might play in advice-taking process.

Key words: advice taking, advice discounting effect, judge-advisor system, decision making