Using advice and assessing its quality

People received advice from four sources and used it to produce a judgment, They also assessed the quality of advice by estimating the probability tha t it would be correct. They were better at assessing than at using advice: combinations of advice based on their assessments were superior to their ju dgments. Order of assessing and using advice, superficial differences betwe en advisors, and using other methods of advice assessment had no significan t effects on this superiority of advice assessment over advice use, However , use but not assessment was improved when some advisors exhibited biases o pposite to those that people typically show. It appears that using advice i mposes a heavier processing load than assessing its quality and that this l oad can be lightened by including advisors who exhibit unusual behavior. Th eir salience may help people working under a heavy processing load make app ropriate pairings between advisor weights and advice, (C) 2000 Academic Pre ss.