The Malleability of Anchoring Effects
Abstract
Abstract. Anchoring effects - the assimilation of a numeric estimate to a previously considered standard - are typically described as very robust and persistent. Based on the assumption that judgmental anchoring involves a hypothesis-testing process in which judges actively seek and generate judgment-relevant target knowledge, it was assumed that anchoring effects might at the same time be fairly malleable. Specifically, subtle influences that change the nature of the tested hypothesis are likely to affect the magnitude of anchoring. Using a procedural priming task, judges were induced to focus on similarities versus differences during a series of anchoring tasks. The results demonstrate that the magnitude of the obtained effect critically depended on this manipulation. In particular, a more pronounced anchoring assimilation effect resulted for judges with a similarity rather than a difference focus. Implications of these findings for models of anchoring as well as for the nature of the anchoring phenomenon are discussed.
References
(1986). Anchoring, efficacy, and action: The influence of judgmental heuristics on self-efficacy judgment and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 492– 501
(1996). The more you ask for, the more you get: Anchoring in personal injury verdicts. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 519– 540
(1999). Anchoring, activation, and the construction of values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79, 115– 153
(1992). Asking questions and influencing answers.. In J.M. Tanur (Ed.), Questions about questions. Inquiries into the cognitive bases of surveys 15– 47 ). New York: Russel Sage Foundation.
(1997). Belief persistence after evidential discrediting: The impact of generated versus provided explanations on the likelihood of discredited outcomes.. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 561– 578
(2001). Sentencing under uncertainty: Anchoring effects in the court-room. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 1535– 1551
(2001). First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 657– 669
(1997). Structure mapping in analogy and similarity. American Psychologist, 52, 45– 56
(1975). Logic and conversation.. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts 41– 58 ). New York: Academic Press.
(1995). Measures of anchoring in estimation tasks. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1161– 1166
(1981). Anchoring and adjustment in probabilistic inferences in auditing. Journal of Accounting Research, 19, 120– 145
(1996). Commonalities and differences in similarity comparisons. Memory & Cognition, 24, 235– 249
(1997). A selective accessibility model of anchoring: Linking the anchoring heuristic to hypothesis-consistent testing and semantic priming. Lengerich, Germany: Pabst..
(2001a). The durability of anchoring effects. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 431– 442
(2001b). “Seek and ye shall find”: Antecedents of assimilation and contrast in social comparison. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31, 499– 509
(1997). Der Ankereffekt in Abhängigkeit ankerkonsistenter Information: Ein Modell selektiver Zugänglichkeit.. [Anchoring effects and the applicability of anchor-consistent information: A selective accessibility model] Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie, 44, 589– 615
(2000). Sources of mental contamination: Comparing the effects of self-generated versus externally-provided primes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 194– 206
(1999a). Comparing is believing: A selective accessibility model of judgmental anchoring.. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 10). Chichester, England: Wiley..
(1999b). Hypothesis-consistent testing and semantic priming in the anchoring paradigm: A selective accessibility model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 136– 164
(2000a). The use of category and exemplar knowledge in the solution of anchoring tasks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 6, 1038– 1052
(2000b). Numeric judgments under uncertainty: The role of knowledge in anchoring. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 495– 518
(in press). The semantics of anchoring. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
(2000). Overcoming the inevitable anchoring effect: Considering the opposite compensates for selective accessibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1142– 1150
(1991). Cognition and rationality in negotiation. New York: The Free Press.
(1987). Experts, amateurs, and real estate: An anchoring-and-adjustment perspective on property pricing decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 39, 84– 97
(1989). Thinking the unthinkable: The effects of anchoring on likelihood estimates of nuclear war. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 19, 67– 91
(1996). Anchoring in simulated competitive market negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67 (1), 16– 25
(1994). Judgment in social context: Biases, shortcomings, and the logic of conversation.. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology. 125– 162 ). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
(1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 592– 604
(1994). Procedural knowledge and processing strategies in social cognition.. In R.S. Wyer & T.K. Srull (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition (2nd ed., Vol. 1, 99– 152 ). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum..
(1978). Hypothesis-testing processes in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1202– 1212
(1987). Thinking, judging, and communicating: A process account of context effects in attitude surveys.. In H. J. Hippler, N. Schwarz, & S. Sudman (Eds.), Social information processing and survey methodology 123– 148 ). New York: Springer.
(1997). Explaining the enigmatic anchoring effect: Mechanisms of selective accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 437– 446
(1991). Judgment processes in motivation: Anchoring and adjustment effects on judgment and behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 49, 208– 229
(1996). Social hypothesis testing: Cognitive and motivational factors.. In E.T. Higgins & A.W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles 239– 270 ). New York: Guilford.
(1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124– 1130
(1996). A new look at anchoring effects: Basic anchoring and its antecedents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 4, 387– 402
(2000). Is 7300 m equal to 7.3 km? Same semantics but different anchoring effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, 82, 314– 333
(1989). Effects of situation familiarity and financial incentives on use of the anchoring and adjustment heuristics for probability assessment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 44, 68– 82
