Your brain likes to let your financial advisor do the thinking

N of only 24 on this study, but very interesting stuff:

Expert Financial Advice Neurobiologically “Offloads” Financial Decision-Making under Risk

A simple financial decision-making task involving risk was employed in the current study to investigate the behavioral and neural mechanisms by which financial advice, provided by an expert economist, affected decisions under risk. Behavioral results showed a significant effect of expert advice on probability weighting, such that probability weighting functions changed in the direction of the expert’s advice. The behavioral effect of expert messages was paralleled by changes in neural activation patterns. Of note, significant correlations with the value of the lottery were obtained in the absence of the expert’s advice (NOM), but not during its presence (MES). These results support the hypothesis that one effect of expert advice is to “offload” calculations of the value of alternative behavioral options that underlie decision-making from the individual’s brain.

Much more in the article.