Predicting what we will like: : Asking a stranger can be as good as asking a friend

•We examine three commonsense theories for predicting future liking of an attitude object.•These theories help people decide what information is most useful for making predictions.•We find that people prefer (1) to have a description of an attitude object rather than a rating or advice.•They also prefer (2) information from a friend rather than a stranger, and (3) advice rather than someone else’s rating.•However, our results show that a description is not always best and a stranger’s opinion can be just as good as a friend’s.