If they ask you, do you think there are more than a million people in Madrid? You would probably answer yes and give a million dollars. If instead of asking you if there are more than a million people in Madrid, they asked you if there are less than 10 million, you would probably say yes, but you would assume a higher figure than the first. The reason for this is that there is a tendency to anchor to an initially supplied or stable reference point and then adapt the response to that reference point. In this Psychology-Online article, we will discover together What is anchoring bias, its characteristics, some examples and how to avoid it.
What is anchor bias
He anchor biasalso know as anchoring heuristic, has been discovered by cognitive psychologists and belongs to a series that human beings are subject to when making decisions. It was first described exhaustively by American psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1960s, based on the fact that people are unconsciously influenced by environmental factors when making decisions, even if they have no relation to the decision itself.
Anchoring is, in fact, a psychological heuristic method that describes the propensity to make decisions based on the first information found. Under this method, individuals start with an implicit reference point (the anchor) and make adjustments to arrive at their own evaluation. For example, the first price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiation, in that a lower price seems reasonable even though it is higher than the car’s value. Or a characteristic that is considered so dominant in a larger whole that it informs all its parts: for example, a person is considered not for their integrity, but as a woman, a man, a black person, a white person, a criminal, a police officer, before any anything else you can think of about this.
In this article we explain.
Types and characteristics of anchor bias
The anchoring effect derives from a heuristic judgment, a guidance mechanism that our brain uses in decision situations. This bias is therefore a cognitive distortion resulting from heuristics, and two types of anchors can be distinguished:
- The unconscious anchoringis characterized by the so-called “priming”: People extract information from their environment and use it as a reference for a decision. The information acts as an unconscious suggestion that influences the next action. Kahneman and Tversky have carried out an experiment in this regard: participants had to first spin the wheel of fortune and then estimate the number of African states. The result: the higher the number obtained by spinning the wheel of fortune, the more African states were presumed.
- The conscious anchoring. The anchoring effect can also be deliberately imposed for the purposes of an accommodation heuristic, for example to stimulate a decision when people have little information available. In this case, they use the little information available as an anchor point, although not as relevant for decision making. If a customer is asked how much she would spend on a caffeine-containing beverage with immune-enhancing substances, she will use the price of ordinary coffee as an anchor, because she is not able to estimate the value of the unknown product.
Examples of anchor bias
As demonstrated in research conducted by Scott Plous (1989), the anchoring and adaptation heuristics can influence social judgments. A first group of participants were asked if they thought the risk of a nuclear war soon was greater than 1% (a 1% anchor); A second group was asked if they thought this risk was less than 90% (a 90% anchor). All participants were invited to estimate the probability of a nuclear war soon. Those who had been invited to reflect on a risk greater than 1% estimated the probable risk at 10%, while those who had been anchored at 90% provided estimates around 25%.
How to avoid anchor bias
When one has to make judgments of uncertainty, ambiguity is usually reduced by anchoring to a stable reference point, progressive adjustments are made, and finally the final decision is made. Indeed, when formulating a social judgment, when an initial value is given, a stable reference point, it seems that we selectively remember information that is coherent and confirms the anchoring.
Numerous studies have shown that it is very difficult to avoid the anchoring effect, and this applies even when the anchors provided are obviously incorrect. Therefore, it seems that it is very difficult to free ourselves from this negative effect, which however manifests itself mainly when we are under pressure to make a quick decision, or if we have a tendency to make hasty decisions. To try to avoid this, however, it may be useful to:
- Reflect on one’s own past historycalling to mind moments in which too hasty decisions have been made.
- Slow down, if possible, your current decision-making process, and take more time. If someone is insistently trying to hurry us up, it is a wake-up call: they could act against our interests, taking advantage of the anchoring effect.
- Find another, totally different from the first, even invented, for what it’s worth. If we can get the second to also influence us, we can at least weaken the effect of the first a little.
Learn about other cognitive biases such as , or .
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Cresta, O. (2015). Gli errorsi cognitivi – L’effetto ancoraggio. Retrieved from: https://www.rentalblog.it/gli-errori-cognitivi-leffetto-ancoraggio/
- IONOS (2020). Effetto ancoraggio: come sfruttare una distortione cognitive a tustro advantage in marketing. Retrieved from: https://www.ionos.it/digitalguide/online-marketing/vendere-online/leffetto-ancoraggio-nel-marketing/
- Myers, G.D. (2009). Social psychology. Milan: McGraw-Hill.