Hayley H. Blunden is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. She studies the dynamics of interpersonal communication and how the communication strategies employees choose impact their wellbeing, work performance, and experiences. She is particularly interested in advice relationships and virtual interactions. Hayley additionally serves as an Instructor of Management and Communication at the Harvard Extension School.
Hayley has worked in a variety of organizational contexts and sectors. She has held positions in internal strategy, consulting, and finance, and has experience working in organizations of all sizes, ranging from a small startup to a Fortune 100 firm. Hayley earned her BA in Economics from The University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Most jobs require us at some point to deliver bad news—whether it be a minor revelation such as a recruiter telling a prospective employee that there’s no wiggle room in salary, or something major, like when a manager must fire an employee. We dread such discussions even when the revelations aren’t at all our fault. It turns out that our aversion is for good reason. Our research shows that people are prone to derogating those who tell them things they don’t want to hear—we shoot the messenger.
Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to “shoot the messenger,” deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a preregistered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively unlikeable (Study 1). A second set of studies points to the specificity of the effect: Study 2A shows that it is unique to the (innocent) messenger and not mere bystanders. Study 2B shows that it is distinct from merely receiving information that one disagrees with. We suggest that people’s tendency to deem bearers of bad news as unlikeable stems in part from their desire to make sense of chance processes. Consistent with this account, receiving bad news activates the desire to sense-make (Study 3A), and in turn, activating this desire enhances the tendency to dislike bearers of bad news (Study 3B). Next, stemming from the idea that unexpected outcomes heighten the desire to sense-make, Study 4 shows that when bad news is unexpected, messenger dislike is pronounced. Finally, consistent with the notion that people fulfill the desire to sense-make by attributing agency to entities adjacent to chance events, messenger dislike is correlated with the belief that the messenger had malevolent motives (Studies 5A, 5B, & 5C). Studies 6A & 6B go further, manipulating messenger motives independently from news valence to suggest its causal role in our process account: the tendency to dislike bearers of bad news is mitigated when recipients are made aware of the benevolence of the messenger’s motives.
Hayley Blunden, Jennifer M. Logg, Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie John and Francesca Gino
Prior advice research has focused on why people rely on (or ignore) advice and its impact on judgment accuracy. We expand the consideration of advice-seeking outcomes by investigating the interpersonal consequences of advice seekers’ decisions. Across nine studies, we show that advisors interpersonally penalize seekers who disregard their advice, and that these reactions are especially strong among expert advisors. This penalty also drives advisor reactions to a widely-recommended advice-seeking strategy: soliciting multiple advisors to leverage the wisdom of crowds. Advisors denigrate and distance themselves from seekers who they learn consulted others, an effect mediated by perceptions that their own advice will be disregarded. Underlying these effects is an asymmetry between advisors’ and seekers’ beliefs about the purpose of the advice exchange: whereas advisors believe giving advice is more about narrowing the option set by providing direction, seekers believe soliciting advice is more about widening the option set by gathering information.
This chapter integrates research on advice interactions, motivations for advising, and the psychological consequences of serving in an advisor role to develop a more comprehensive perspective on the psychology of advising. By connecting this work, which spans various methodologies and theoretical foundations, it advances current thinking on advice giving in two primary ways. First, in examining the diversity of motivations for advice giving, it extends the set of advice-exchange outcomes to be considered beyond those previously emphasized. Second, it highlights previously unexplored aspects of the advisor role that are likely to impact the advice-giving experience. The chapter concludes by providing recommendations for advisors and identifying areas ripe for future research to illuminate the advisor side of the advice-exchange process.
