Struggling people should give advice, not ask for it
A study with 2,274 people found the reverse of what everyone assumes about who benefits from advice.
The instinct when you're stuck — on a diet, a budget, a temper you can't manage — is to go find someone who's better at it and ask them what to do. A 2018 study led by psychologist Lauren Eskreis-Winkler tested that instinct against its opposite and the opposite won, repeatedly, across 2,274 people.
In the first experiment, middle schoolers who were behind on their own homework were assigned to either receive motivational advice from an expert teacher or give motivational advice to a younger student. The advice-givers went on to spend more time on their own homework over the following month than the advice-receivers did. The team then ran the same test on people trying to save money, control their temper, lose weight, and find a job — same result each time. Giving advice on a problem beat getting advice on it.
Here's the part that makes it more than a curiosity: when the researchers asked people beforehand which would motivate them more, almost everyone guessed wrong. They expected receiving expert advice to help more than giving amateur advice. The actual mechanism, the study found, was confidence — telling someone else what to do forces you to sound like you have it handled, and some of that borrowed certainty sticks.
The stuck person doesn't need a better answer handed to them. They need to hear themselves say the answer out loud, to someone who actually needed to hear it.