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Advice giving: A subtle pathway to power
- Swizec 8y agoThe abstract talks a lot about advice giving creating a sense of power. But does it also create power? I don't know enough about this field to answer that question for myself, so I'm raising it to the HN hivemind.
- AmericanChopper 8y agoCouldn’t it be a self-fulfilling situation? If you feel empowered, you’d be more likely to act boldly, and boldness is a source of power.
- UK-Al05 8y agoDepends on your status. Boldness can you get you fired.
- AmericanChopper 8y agoThat’s just being bold beyond your means.
- croo 8y agoWhich probably means someone felt threatened ... which means power?
- ataturk 8y agoAnd so can lack of decisive action, so it's a mixed bag, isn't it?
- carlmr 8y agoI also think the headline seems misleading, even if you start reading the first few paragraphs. I think advice giving doesn't necessarily confer power. Especially if you're always handing out unwanted advice, a lot of people don't like that. They get hurt in their pride because they believe they can do it without you. If you want to exercise power through advice you have to ask good questions to find out whether the advised person actually needs your advice, and in which area specifically. You have to get to a point where they actually ask for it.
- watwut 8y agoThere are also other reasons to dislike unsolicited advice. * It robs you of possibility to figure it out for yourself and think for yourself. It kills pleasure or achievement of whatever activity you are doing. It prevents learning. * You look less capable to third parties. That actually matters. * It is often wrong, as whoever gives that advice does not have full information. As in, I am doing it this way and not that way for a reason and really really don't care about defending my choices to strangers who are no more qualified then me.
- Swizec 8y agoI think the base assumption with advice giving, when considered a positive, should be that the recipient asked for advice.
- erikb 8y agoWell, creating confidence usually creates power. So probably the receiver will gain power, while the advise giver will lose power. It's probably more complicated due to good advise yielding respect on the receiver side and sometimes both are having observers that might consider the advise giver being in a higher position. Also in hierarchic cultures the advise giver can modify the available future choices of the advise receiver, especially when there are observers.
- YinglingLight 8y agoOptimism can create money out of nothing. Literally. The stock market is driven off optimism. Persuasion is the most powerful force on the planet.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI think money is actually a zero-sum game :)
- YinglingLight 8y ago"One of the magical things about economics is that you can create an economic asset out of nothing but persuasion. For example, if you persuade people to be more optimistic about the economy, people invest more money, buy more products, create more jobs, and generally manifest the better economy from their own expectations. " - Scott Adams
- asdfman123 8y agoI think it does. A big part of leadership is just about having a clear sense of what the hell is going on and what you're going to do about it. So if people come to you to advice, they confer leadership to you and create a dynamic. I mean, at least in tech, a leader is often someone who knows a thing or two. How should I build my application? I don't know, ask Jack, the senior dev. He knows all about that sort of thing and can tell you what to do.
- r41nbowdash 8y agoIt creates power in the advice-seeker by making the advice-giver invested. It can serve as an indicator of ongoing dynamics. If used to gain power, it's going to blow up in your face. From the psychoanalytic point of view, verbalizing solutions before the patient is ready is like the #1 worst thing someone can do, and the largest generator of resistance out there. Just don't. Check Carl Rogers, if you're interested ("Client-Centered Therapy", "Counseling and Psychotherapy")
- timwaagh 8y agoi find receiving advice to be difficult because the other person essentially places himself above you. That is why i try to be careful with dishing out too much advice. But sometimes its necessary. and sometimes i just cannot help it. if i give advice, i try to do it in a non-personal way. like 'i just found a cool trick to do y' rather than 'you are doing it like x, but doing y would be better'.
- Aeolun 8y agoI do too, but I’ve recently found out that’s really hard to do if there’s a completely different but much better way.
- mkirklions 8y agoAfter going ballistic on 'stupid' people on twitter and getting quite negative feedback on such, I'm done giving advice. People were propagating wrong information in my specialty and I lost it. I even provided them with factual/math proof and it didnt matter. Now I'm over it, if they want to find the information, they can. Otherwise they get to fail without my help.
- growlist 8y agoGroup dynamics come into play as well. I guess everyone at one time or another has made a comment that has been ignored or disparaged, only for one of the in-crowd to make the exact same statement and receive a positive response. I've learnt over time to spot toxic situations like this and remove myself from them, but sometimes circumstances make that impossible, which is depressing.
- maccard 8y agoHow you deliver the advice is as important as what advice you give. There's a difference between: "Hey, I saw your thoughts on X, but actually here's some info that says you're incorrect" and "You're wrong. Here is proof, please read it and stop spreading worthless information" Based on the tone of your comment, is it possible that your delivery may be too harsh?
- phkahler 8y agoI was curious, but they don't mention increasing affiliation (another of the 3 needs). If advise is accepted it may also provide validation to the advice giver - is that a sense of power? I guess I'm a little disappointed that they only used one scale. I was happy to see p<0.001 for a change!
- madeuptempacct 8y agoSomeone just read The Prince.
- dang 8y agoMaybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. Especially of other people's work—this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.