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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:27AM
Asking for advice may make you look competent or incompetent. More exactly, asking for advice will let see others how competent or incompetent you actually are.
So if you're competent, feel free to ask for advice, because it will reveal your competence. If you're incompetent, only ask for advice in situations where you don't mind others to learn that you are incompetent (or where they already know it).
So no, if you ask for advice on using the cup holder of your computer, you'll not be considered competent.