The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review

 

December 19, 2014 Your Fixed Opinions Hamper Your Ability to Hear Good Advice In trying to estimate the calories in certain foods, blindfolded research subjects were able to achieve pretty good accuracy simply by weighing the opinions of knowledgeable people whose advice was provided as part of the experiment. But nonblindfolded participants were about 20% further off the mark in their estimates, because in addition to hearing the advisers' views, they were able to see the foods themselves and were swayed by their own, usually incorrect, opinions, say Ilan Yaniv and Shoham Choshen-Hillel of Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The bottom line: People who form their own opinions about a subject tend to discount the views of knowledgeable advisers, often to their own detriment. SOURCE: Exploiting the Wisdom of Others to Make Better Decisions: Suspending Judgment Reduces Egocentrism and Increases Accuracy

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