Abstract
How many times do we receive advice in a single day? How many times in a week? From health decisions to personal relationships, advice is a staple of human interaction. As MacGeorge and Van Swol write, “Advice is consequential in almost every imaginable social and cultural context” (p. 4). As a result, advice research represents a broad array of contexts and perspectives not housed in any one discipline, but instead connecting work from areas such as psychology, communication, sociology, law, linguistics, philosophy, and business. Though advice occurs in specific interactions, its study is diverse and dynamic as captured by The Oxford Handbook of Advice. The book presents a significant collection of essays and information that frames the study of advice, offering scholars a practical resource for understanding advice as a social phenomenon. Contributions to the book primarily focus on the U.S. and other Western cultures and represent the various disciplines mentioned earlier, with a significant number of chapters coming from communication and psychology. As work on advice offers a relatively new focus of study, many of the authors are early-career academics. Ultimately, this first attempt at formalizing and collating the work done by advice scholars presents a useful tool for researchers in this growing area.
The Handbook embraces its interdisciplinary view as a way academics can learn from each other. The editors argue in their opening paragraphs that academic disciplines, situated in close proximity literally and figuratively, can benefit from “attending to the diversity of work on advice” (p. 3), as the editors found they experienced on finding each other’s work. With MacGeorge’s background in communication studies and Van Swol’s background in psychology, they form the initial bridge between academic perspectives and ultimately embody the book’s purpose. While both study advice, Van Swol looks at advice utilization in group settings and MacGeorge studies health care contexts and patient–provider interactions. Both are well prepared to edit this collection, each having published extensive research on advice.
As they discuss the Handbook’s goals in the introduction, the editors argue a need exists to create a more standardized understanding of advice itself and that by embracing a multidisciplinary approach, this area of research will see new and exponential growth. They begin by defining advice, which is “primarily instructional” and also “typically prosocial” (p. 22). They identify terms that are often conflated with advice, but distinctly different, such as emotional support and persuasion, and work to set advice aside as its own unique focus of study. The rest of the book is organized into three sections: 5 chapters addressing theoretical and methodological approaches to studying advice, 13 chapters focusing on advice within specific contexts, and 2 chapters reflecting on ethics and overarching themes that emerge from the collection. The book ultimately demonstrates the many ways advice succeeds and fails, is taken or ignored, and is useful or not.
Following the introduction, the section titled “Theory and Method” includes 5 chapters. In chapters 2 and 3, the authors spend time considering advice from both the advisee’s and advisor’s perspective, noting the much broader body of research concerned with the decision maker and evaluations of the likelihood that advice will be used once it is received. In chapter 4, conversation analysis and communication are identified as two paradigms offering approaches to the study of advice messages and interactions. Chapters 5 and 6 consider how advice functions in intimate, interpersonal relationships as compared with groups, networks, and organizations. Chapter 5 outlines interpersonal theories such as relational turbulence theory and attachment theory as tools for approaching interpersonal communication advice studies. The chapter notes one challenge for interpreting advice literature: the overlooked nature of the relationship as an important influencing factor in whether advice is taken. However, the chapter’s theories identify other key points such as the fluctuating need for advice within relationships. Chapter 6 shifts focus to groups that include three or more people, noting that “advice in groups shares similarities with message-focused advice research in terms of methods, but analysis of group data requires different techniques than individual-level data” (p. 120). The authors use a case study approach to share their recommendations for studying groups in ways that best replicate the validity typical of a laboratory study.
The next section of the book looks at context and applications for advice research. These 13 chapters cover topics such as family interactions, workplace and work-related advice, and professional advice. Each of these chapters offers a systematic approach to the selected topic including specifics on the definition and consideration of advice in context, major themes, successful giving and receiving of advice, future directions for research, and advice on advising. The chapters discuss advice in multiple ways including as a form of everyday interaction (such as family and work relationships), a debated practice (therapy and psychoanalysis), and/or an embedded expectation (medical, legal, government policy, and mentorship). In this section, the reader develops a clear, but nuanced understanding of advice studies, and themes across chapters connect concepts even as each form of advice brings its own variables and challenges. For example, many chapters consider why advice is utilized or rejected once received, such as exploration of reasons people may resist advice voluntarily solicited via helplines (chapter 8). The debate over whether and what kind of advice should be given frames the discussion on psychotherapy in chapter 9. The authors note that overbearing advice can undermine the work being done, yet advice during sessions is also frequently listed as one of the most beneficial parts of therapy. In chapter 12, the concepts of power and status emerge as important variables in a person’s choice to accept advice from workplace mentors. Chapter 16 identifies formal and informal advisors as consequential for government policy and typical of government decision-making processes. Each of these examples brings out important questions, and together the chapters introduce a well-honed array of considerations and challenges. An emerging area to include more specifically in future editions could be online influencers and bloggers, whose communication with their personal networks frequently constitutes advice in a way that updates content included in chapters 17 and 18.
As the book concludes, its focus shifts to ethical considerations and broad conclusions. Ethics emerges periodically within the text, as several authors discuss the motivations behind giving advice. However, chapter 20 explores ethics specifically by looking at ethical foundations for the study of advice, which Browne argues has “consequences for the well-being of both [the self and others]” (p. 403). This argument that advice is ultimately consequential continues in the final chapter, as the editors note, “People have important, improved outcomes associated with receiving advice” (p. 413). As a result, they explore improving the underutilization of advice, the importance of advisor–advisee relationships, the role of technology, and best practices across contexts.
The strength of MacGeorge and Van Swol’s text lies in the diversity of contexts and the flexibility surrounding methodology. The editors present a cohesive picture of advice as a concept important for understanding human nature and interaction. However, as a cross-disciplinary subtopic, the literature on advice is broad topically, but lacking at times in depth. Many chapters spend significant time hypothesizing or sharing future research directions, pointing to the gaps in the literature that still require work. Future versions of this Handbook should include emerging work on advice that will strengthen topics that lean heavily on only a few existing studies.
For scholars interested in influence, power, decision making, interpersonal relationships, health, and psychology, this volume on advice captures the wide-ranging applications of this interaction and the most critical considerations for research. As D’Angelo and D’Angelo write in chapter 10, “Advice matters” (p. 197). This succinct opening to their chapter also serves as a suitable way to summarize this book. The book’s goal of expanding and formalizing advice as an area of useful and productive work aptly demonstrates how this emerging field is deserving of both current and future attention.
