When you face a tough decision—changing jobs, investing money, choosing a university—how do you decide? You might listen to your gut, think it through carefully, ask a friend, or even crowdsource it online. Decision scientists will tell you that seeking advice often improves choices. Anthropologists add that humans thrive because we share knowledge. And yet… when people in 12 countries, speaking 13 languages, and even in two Amazonian Indigenous communities, were given these four options side-by-side, the clear favourite was self-reliance.

In this large, carefully designed study, Igor Grossmann and colleagues presented over 3,500 adults with everyday dilemmas. The choice was always between relying on yourself (intuition or deliberate reasoning) or others (friends’ advice or “wisdom of the crowd”). Across the board, private deliberation topped the list. Intuition came second, and crowdsourcing trailed far behind. Even in the most interdependent cultures—where relationships and collective decision-making are valued—most people still preferred to decide on their own.

That doesn’t mean culture doesn’t matter. People who saw themselves as more interdependent were relatively more open to advice. This was especially if they tended to take a self-transcendent perspective in conflicts. Those with a stronger independent self-view or higher need for cognition leaned even harder into self-reliance. But crucially, the cultural “tilt” never overturned the global default: deciding alone.

Why? The reasons may differ. In more individualistic contexts, self-reliance affirms competence and agency. In tighter, relationship-focused networks, asking for advice might carry costs—signalling weakness, creating obligations, or exposing personal details. Both paths lead to the same behavioural endpoint.

There’s also a reality check for how we think about “interdependent” societies. Valuing relationships doesn’t necessarily mean seeking explicit counsel. Advice can be absorbed indirectly—by observation, imitation, or subtle cues—without ever asking a question.

So, the next time we assume “many minds are better than one,” remember: most of us, most of the time, still choose to go it alone. The puzzle for researchers (and perhaps for all of us) is not whether we prefer self-reliance. Instead, it’s about under what conditions we’re willing to override it—because that’s when the full potential of collective intelligence might finally be realised.

Abstract of the study:

When multiple ways of deciding are laid out side-by-side, which does one favour? We conducted experiments in 12 countries (n = 3517 individuals; 13 languages; two Indigenous communities), with adults choosing among four decision strategies—personal intuition, private deliberation, friends’ advice or crowd wisdom—when working through six everyday dilemmas. In every society, self-reliant decisions (intuition or deliberation) were most commonly preferred and considered the wisest. Expectations for fellow citizens, however, were mixed: advice from friends was expected about as often as self-reliant routes. The self-reliance tilt was strongest in cultures and individuals high in independent self-construal and need for cognition, and weakest where interdependence and self-transcendent reflection were salient. The same patterns emerged when examining ratings of each strategy’s utility and oral protocols with Indigenous groups. Self-reliance appears the modal preference across cultures, but its strength is predictably tempered when cultures, and individuals within them, construe the self in relational rather than autonomous terms.