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Recipients of advice expect it to be both highly informed and honest. Suspecting either one of these attributes reduces the use of the advice. Does the degree of advice use depend on the reason for suspecting its accuracy? Five experiments tested the effect of the type of suspicion on advice taking. We find that recipients of advice discount it more severely when they suspect intentional bias than when they suspect unintentional error, for example, due to the advisor's insufficient knowledge. The effect persisted when we controlled for, and disclosed, the actual accuracy of the advice; it persisted when participants' own evaluations of the quality of the advice, as well as their desire to receive it, were equally high under both types of suspicion. Finally, we find the effect of suspicion on advice use stems from the different attributions of uncertainty associated with each type of suspicion. The results suggest people place an implicit premium on advisors' honesty, and demonstrate the importance of establishing reputation for advisors' success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Are overconfident beliefs driven by the motivation to view oneself positively? We test the relationship between motivation and overconfidence using two distinct, but often conflated measures: better-than-average (BTA) beliefs and overplacement. Our results suggest that motivation can indeed affect these faces of overconfidence, but only under limited conditions. Whereas BTA beliefs are inflated by motivation, introducing some specificity and clarity to the standards of assessment (Experiment 1) or to the trait's definition (Experiments 2 and 3) reduces or eliminates this bias in judgment overall. We find stronger support for a cognitive explanation for overconfidence, which emphasizes the effect of task difficulty. The difficulty of possessing a desirable trait (Experiment 4) or succeeding on math and logic problems (Experiment 5) affects self-assessment more consistently than does motivation. Finally, we find the lack of an objective standard for vague traits allows people to create idiosyncratic definitions and view themselves as better than others in their own unique ways (Experiment 6). Overall, the results suggest motivation's effect on BTA beliefs is driven more by idiosyncratic construals of assessment than by self-enhancing delusion. They also suggest that by focusing on vague measures (BTA rather than overplacement) and vague traits, prior research may have exaggerated the role of motivation in overconfidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).