Attempt­ing to dis­cover the most effec­tive way to offer advice, researchers iden­ti­fied four sep­a­rate types of advice:

  • Advice for is a rec­om­men­da­tion to pick a par­tic­u­lar option.
  • Advice against is a rec­om­men­da­tion to avoid a par­tic­u­lar option.
  • Infor­ma­tion sup­plies a piece of infor­ma­tion that the deci­sion maker might not know about.
  • Deci­sion sup­port sug­gests how to go about mak­ing the choice, but does not make a spe­cific recommendation.

Their study showed that infor­ma­tion advice was the most valu­able to those mak­ing deci­sions, for a num­ber of reasons:

For one thing, when some­one makes a rec­om­men­da­tion for or against a par­tic­u­lar option, a deci­sion maker may feel like they have lost a bit of their inde­pen­dence in mak­ing a choice. Rec­om­men­da­tions about how to go about mak­ing the choice may also make a deci­sion maker feel a loss of inde­pen­dence. When the advice comes in the form of infor­ma­tion, though, the deci­sion maker still feels like they have some autonomy.

Sec­ond, infor­ma­tion helps peo­ple to make future deci­sions in the same domain. New pieces of infor­ma­tion often make peo­ple aware of dimen­sions of a deci­sion that they had never con­sid­ered before. A rec­om­men­da­tion for or against a par­tic­u­lar option is use­ful for the spe­cific deci­sion that you are mak­ing at a given time, but that advice may not be as help­ful in the future.

Finally, get­ting infor­ma­tion makes peo­ple feel more con­fi­dent in the deci­sion they ulti­mately make. The infor­ma­tion pro­vides rea­sons for or against a par­tic­u­lar option. There is a lot of evi­dence that peo­ple feel bet­ter about deci­sions when they are able to give a rea­son for mak­ing the choice. Infor­ma­tion pro­vides a good jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a choice.

via Life­hacker