Cognitive Approach: Biases in Thinking & Decision Making - Anchoring Bias

Question 1

What is anchoring bias?

Answer 1

• the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the “anchor”) when making decisions
• during decision-making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments

Question 2

Hamilton & Gifford (1976) can be used for…

Answer 2

cognitive bias and stereotypes

Question 3

Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) can be used for…

Answer 3

cognitive bias

Question 4

Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) - aim

Answer 4

• to test the influence of the anchoring bias on decision-making

Question 5

Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) - procedure

Answer 5

• high school students were used as participants
• lab experiment
• participants in the “ascending condition” were asked to quickly estimate the value of 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8
• those in the “descending condition” were asked to quickly estimate the value of 8 X 7 X 6 X 5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1
• since we read from left to right, the researchers assumed that group 1 would use “1” as an anchor and predict a lower value than the group that started with “8” as the anchor
• the expectation was that the first number seen would bias the estimate of the value by the participant

Question 6

Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) - findings

Answer 6

• the median for the ascending group was less than the descending group
• neither guessed the actual median

Question 7

Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) - conclusion

Answer 7

• the first number seen by the participants seems to have biased the final estimate
• since they had no time to calculate in 5 seconds, they had to make an estimation based on the first few multiplications
• when those numbers were smaller, the estimate was smaller