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from the unfortunately-I-cannot-appear-to-be-less-competent dept.
You hear a lot about fears of heights or spiders or clowns, but down deep, most people are most afraid of this one thing: sounding dumb. New research shows that people shy away from asking for help for fear of appearing less competent, but that this is an unfounded fear: Asking for advice actually makes you seem more capable.
Across five studies, a research team led by Harvard Business School’s Alison Wood Brooks finds that people think better of others when they ask for advice — mostly because people really love to give advice. Being asked for advice seems to give us a self-confidence boost, which in turn enhances our opinion of the advice-seeker, Brooks and colleagues write in the paper, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Management Science.
[Paper] (PDF)
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 25 2014, @11:19PM
Asking for advice can be done in a wrong way. We had a guy who would ask one person a specific technical question which in context leaves little wiggle-room, then right away afterward within earshot ask another tech the same question. Then afterward another tech the same question.
We thought he was either senile, a dick, or a corporate plant trying to gauge everybody's capability (especially after his evil grins and constant references to "the great purge").
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Monday August 25 2014, @11:37PM
Absolutely, yes. There is a huge difference between political information seeking, gossip, turmoil generation, and finding the right person to answer a genuine question. I like to believe that I was in that last category :-)
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"