Alba Ramírez Sánchez
From negotiating property prices to blind-guessing the result of a long multiplication, the previous exposure to certain data can greatly influence our choices and decisions. This phenomenon, first theorized by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, is called anchoring: a cognitive bias where a particular reference point or 'anchor' influences an individual's decisions. This exposure to a value and its influence in decision making plays a big role in both the scientific community where anchoring could introduce a human bias into research, as well as in day-to-day life where the existence of anchors could be a powerful tool in marketing, economic decisions, or negotiations.
For example, in one of their first studies, Tversky and Kahneman asked participants to solve, in five seconds, the product of the numbers one through eight. One group was presented this information in ascendent order, starting with one (1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8), while the other had to compute the solution given the equation in descendent order. As the time was limited, subjects’ answers were given based on the first operations they could solve, resulting in the first group giving a median estimate of 512 as the product, while the second gave an estimate of 2,250 (with the correct answer being 40,320).
There is no consensus among authors and researchers as to what the causes of “anchoring” are, and some even theorized different phenomena and causes are at play. Regardless of its origin, research suggests that the anchoring effect is difficult to avoid, even when individuals are fully aware of its existence. Even group decisions could be affected by anchoring on many occasions.
Having the basics of this phenomenon in mind, many questions arise. For example, do anchor values influence decisions equally on one, five and fifty minutes after the initial exposure? Recent research published in the Journal of Young Investigators aimed to depict the role time delay and processing depth might play in anchoring. The authors, students from Whitman College, carried on this research in the context of interpreting data on glacial melting rates among 176 individuals aged 18 to 82 connected to the same college.
In order to effectively measure the influence of processing depth and delay, participants remotely estimated glacial melting rates in two ways: calculating the mean value given instructions on how to do so (deep processing) or being already presented with an average value (shallow processing). This task was completed in two ways, immediately after exposure to the anchor or after watching a three minute, one second Saturday Night Live YouTube video (delay). In either situation, two anchor groups were created, low and high, with the anchor value being the real melting rate mean minus/plus three times the standard deviation, respectively.
The research results not only suggested the existence of the anchoring effect, with low and high anchor group mean values differing greatly. They also came to conclude that neither delay nor depth processing affected anchoring on individuals. Furthermore, the data suggest that the interaction between depth and delay was not significant in the effect either.
Although it is clear that the anchoring effect is real and present in many situations, both inside and outside the laboratory, more research needs to be done in order to successfully identify which factors affect anchoring. Furthermore, little research contemplates the relation that may exist between time delay and processing depth, thus research needs to look into the way these two variables may influence each other and the overall effect to anchoring.
References
Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974) ‘Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’, Science 185(4157), doi: 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
Epley, N. & Gilovich, T. (2005) ‘When Effortful Thinking Influences Judgmental Anchoring: Differential Effects of Forewarning and Incentives on Self-Generated and Externally Provided Anchors’, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 18(3), 199-212, doi: 10.1002/bdm.495
Simmons, J. P., LeBoeuf, R. A., & Nelson, L. D. (2010) ‘The effect of accuracy motivation on anchoring and adjustment: Do people adjust from provided anchors?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99(6), 917–932. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021540
Kerr, N. L. & Tindale, S. R. (2003) ‘Group Performance and Decision Making’, Annual Review of Psychology 55, 623-655, doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142009
Killingsworth, Blake W. & Izbiky, Alexander J. (2021) ‘The Effect of Depth of Processing and Delay on the Anchoring Effect’, Journal of Young Investigators 40(7), doi: 10.22186/jyi.40.7.1-8