The curious counselor: The role of social curiosity in advice provision.

that expertise through advice. Across long-term coaching relationships (Study 1) and short-term advice provision (Studies 2-3), advisers' social curiosity is associated with greater perspective taking, yielding higher quality advice. We find that social curiosity is malleable and, when externally induced, improves advisers' ability to take perspectives, ultimately generating advice that advisees prefer (Study 3). Exploratory analyses reveal that these relationships are contingent on the domain of inquiry: Social curiosity is more predictive of advice quality in less structured domains than in more structured, rule-based domains (Study 2). Taken together, these three studies (featuring 1,525 advisers and 1,905 advice evaluators generating 8,761 observations) alongside three additional supplementary studies reveal that the role of social curiosity operates above and beyond related constructs, notably advisers' intellectual curiosity and existing expertise, as well as predictors of advising or helping behaviors more broadly, such as relationship length, prosocial orientation, and communication competency. These findings highlight that effective advice provision involves an interest not only in the problem but also in the person. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).