“I Am 30F and Need Advice!”: A Mixed-Method Analysis of the Effects of Advice-Seekers’ Self-Disclosure on Received Replies

Abstract

In community question answering sites, users can easily make a post to ask questions or seek advice. Others volunteer replies to these posts to provide answers of varying quality, detail, and helpfulness. In the advice-seeking process, self-disclosure enables posters to provide a relatable context for their requests but comes at a cost of greater identifiability. We focus on the "r/Advice" Reddit community and present a mixed-method study on how self-disclosure of advice-seekers shapes the prevalence and detail of the feedback received. We focus particularly on age and gender disclosure as both are reliably detected and normatively considered in the context of giving advice. We use both hurdle negative binomial regression models and discourse analysis to examine the relationship between self-disclosure and the replies received and explore themes related to disclosure. The results show that advice-seekers' age or gender disclosure correlates with more replies and more helpful replies, but the effects of age and gender disclosure are not additive. We also find both reciprocity and homophily effects in disclosure as reply-givers are more likely to self-disclose when the advice-seeker does so. The lack of additive effects alongside the thematic analysis suggests disclosure practices are used to elicit sufficient credibility or basis for empathy, whereas too much or too little disclosure creates uncertainty or inhibits the applicability of the received advice.