The burden of disclosure: Increased compliance with distrusted advice
Sah, Loewenstein and Cain start from the point that advisers with conflicts of interest may give biased advice and that telling the advisee about the conflict is often proposed as the fix. Across six experiments they found that disclosure can lower advisees' trust in the advice and yet increase the pressure to comply with it, especially when advisees feel obliged to serve the adviser's interests. Disclosure can therefore burden the people it is meant to protect. The added pressure is reduced when a third party makes the disclosure, when the conflict is not mutually known, when advisees can change their minds later, or when they decide in private.
Sah, Loewenstein and Cain start from the point that advisers with conflicts of interest may give biased advice and that telling the advisee about the conflict is often proposed as the fix. Across six experiments they found that disclosure can lower advisees' trust in the advice and yet increase the pressure to comply with it, especially when advisees feel obliged to serve the adviser's interests. Disclosure can therefore burden the people it is meant to protect. The added pressure is reduced when a third party makes the disclosure, when the conflict is not mutually known, when advisees can change their minds later, or when they decide in private.
Written from the abstract, author's publication page (sunitasah.com).
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Sah, S., Loewenstein, G., & Cain, D. M. (2013). The burden of disclosure: Increased compliance with distrusted advice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(2), 289-304. doi:10.1037/a0030527