Kaitlin Woolley ’12 was leaning toward taking snow pants to an outdoor event, but her husband suggested she leave them home. As she shivered later, she kicked herself – but did not blame her husband.

“I felt like I was living out our research,” she said.

In a series of experiments, Woolley, professor of marketing and management communications in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and Dr. Sunita Sah, associate professor of management and organizations in the SC Johnson College and faculty fellow at the Cornell Health Policy Center, found that when people go along with opinions that go against their better judgment, they feel more culpable for the decision if things go wrong than if they hadn’t received another opinion.

“If you have another person in the decision process, you would think that’s going to help spread the responsibility,” Woolley said. “And yet not only do people not blame the adviser more, they’re blaming themselves more.”

Woolley and Sah published their findings in “Kicking Yourself: Going Against Your Inclinations Leads to Greater Feelings of Control and Culpability,” which published Feb. 26 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

In a set of five studies, participants chose between two lotteries, one with clearly superior prizes. Some subjects were offered input from an adviser who had no more knowledge about the choices. The adviser recommended the lesser lottery, and in four of the five studies participants received the lowest possible prize: 10 cents.

The research included a 200-subject, in-person experiment with physical prizes in the lobby of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, and four online studies, with up to 1,200 participants per experiment.

Across all studies, they found that participants’ feelings of culpability and the perception that they had control over the situation were greater in the group that received input than in the group that made an independent decision.

The effect may seem counterintuitive, but going against one’s better judgment increases thoughts about better decisions that could have been made, which amplify feelings of control over the situation. Participants think about how they could have ignored the advice and enjoyed the better prize – or been warm in the snow pants they left at home.

“This effect could extend beyond small decisions. It can apply to major life choices, like wondering, ‘What if I had chosen a different career?’” Sah said.

In previous research, Sah, a physician turned organizational psychologist, found that people often followed obviously bad advice. This new research explored the downstream effects of regret, responsibility and blame after following bad advice – at least from an adviser who is not an expert.

“Our research highlights the importance of rejecting suggestions that go against our better judgments,” Sah said. “People often assume that following someone else’s suggestion will shield them from responsibility or regret. But in reality, the opposite happens. You end up feeling worse when you ignored what you knew was the better choice.”