![]() ![]() The primacy effect is the tendency for people to remember things that they learn first better than things that they learn later on (Stewart et al., 2004). One explanation of why the anchoring bias occurs is due to the primacy effect. This leads to a large difference between the average estimates between the two groups, which emphasizes both the significance and the scale of the anchoring bias. The group who estimated the former equation would be estimating based on a product of about 336, while the group who estimated the latter equation would be estimating based on a product of about 6. In other words, people most likely multiplied the first few numbers in the sequence and then estimated their final answer based on that product. These results confirmed Tversky and Kahneman's predictions, which they explained using the idea that "people may perform a few steps of computation and estimate the product by extrapolation or adjustment" (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p. Tversky and Kahneman also demonstrated the anchoring bias in another experiment, in which one group was told to estimate the answer to 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1, while another group was told to estimate the answer to 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).ĭue to the properties of multiplication, these equations are equivalent, but Tversky and Kahneman found that the group who estimated the former equation had a median estimate of 2,250, while the group who estimated the latter equation had a median estimate of only 512 (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). The groups both gave an uneven amount of weight to the initial value, causing their final estimates to be swayed in the direction of that initial value. They found that the group that received an initial number of 10 had a lower median estimate (x = 25) than the median estimate for the group that received an initial number of 65 (x = 45) (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).īoth group's estimations were clearly influenced by their starting values. Tversky & Kahneman illustrated the anchoring bias through an experiment where they asked participants to make estimations of an amount, such as "the percentage of African countries in the United Nations".Īfter a wheel of fortune was spun to choose a random number, the participant was asked to determine if the chosen number was greater than or less than the amount that they would estimate afterwards (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p. This paper introduced three major heuristics or biases that humans use in the processes of judgment and decision-making: the representativeness heuristic, the availability heuristic, and the adjustment and anchoring heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).Įach of these heuristics plays a significant role in our everyday decision-making, usually without us even knowing. The idea of the anchoring bias originated in a 1974 paper by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman called Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). One can avoid the anchoring bias by educating oneself about the bias, being in a positive mood, being agreeable and open to experience, and being experienced in the given task (Englich & Soder, 2009 Caputo, 2014 Welsh et al., 2014).Īnchoring bias is closely related to the decision-making process, and occurs when we rely too heavily on either pre-existing information or the first piece of information (the anchor) when making a decision.The anchoring bias can be influenced by a variety of factors, including mood, personality, and experience. ![]() Examples of the anchoring bias can be seen in a wide variety of everyday experiences, including medical diagnoses, relationships, and monetary decisions.People make inaccurate final estimates due to inaccurate adjustments from an initial value. ![]()
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