Advice Interaction through the Social Cognition Lens

This chapter aims to demonstrate the feasibility and merit of conceptualizing advice interaction through the interplay of communication and social cognition. It emphasizes that advice interaction is a mutual process where advisors and recipients actively influence each other&s;s perceptions of social reality constructed around the problem situation and around them. The chapter explicates advisors’ and recipients’ communicative acts and perceptual alignments made at each stage of advice interaction: initiating/advice-seeking, advice-giving, and decision-making. The existing literature is organized into a proposed framework of aligning advisor—recipient perceptions: aligning perceptions of the need for advice, the problem situation, and advice outcomes. The chapter concludes by discussing implications for future research, encouraging further theorization of the mutual and dynamic processes of advice interaction.