Anchoring Bias - The Decision Lab

Anchors can even influence how you think your life is going. In one experiment, college students were asked two questions: (a) How happy are you? (b) How often are you dating?

In deciding, people often start with a specific piece of information or trait (anchor) and adjust as necessary to come up with a final answer. The bias is for people to make insufficient adjustments from the anchor, leading to off-the-mark responses. Systematically, the final answer leans too close to the anchor, whether or not the anchor is sensib

companies have a strong incentive to exploit behavioral biases, including availability, unrealistic optimism, and anchoring.

The phenomenon we were studying is so common and so important in the everyday world that you should know its name: it is an anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity. What happens is one of the most reliable and robust results of experimental psychology: the estimates

ANCHORING occurs when we are drawn to a conclusion by something that should not have any relevance to our decision. It is when we let irrelevant information pollute the decision-making process.

ANCHORING occurs when we are drawn to a conclusion by something that should not have any relevance to our decision. It is when we let irrelevant information pollute the decision-making process.

an anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity. What happens is one of the most reliable and robust results of experimental psychology: the estimates stay close to the number that people considered—hence the image of an anchor.

In situations with limited information or uncertainty, anchors can strongly influence the outcome. For instance, studies show that the party that makes the first offer can benefit from a strong anchoring effect in ambiguous situations. Developing and recognizing a full range of outcomes is the best protection against the anchoring effect if you are