A second group of students were given the same question and amount of time to answer, but in reverse: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, 1974) demonstrated this when they gave students only five seconds to answer this math question: We come up with an anchor and then adjust it – with the anchor usually giving us an incorrect answer. The first has to do with uncertainty, or when we have to make decisions quickly. There are two major theories that are part of the anchoring effect, the anchor-and-adjust hypothesis and selective accessibility theory.
But it can also affect other areas, e.g recruitment. Whether as an individual or an organisation, the anchoring effect can impact our decision-making around many things – purchases are a key area where this bias kicks into play. Have you ever paid more than you wanted to for, a used car, for example? You may have negotiated down from the original asking price – but if the salesman understands the anchoring effect (and they do!), they know that asking for a higher price will anchor a buyer and in turn, likely the sale will still be profitable, even after the buyer has negotiated down from their original asking price. It’s one of many mental shortcuts we use to help us make decisions, quickly, but it can lead to our choices being based on irrational ‘anchors’. The anchoring effect is our tendency to use the first piece of information we come across, or the first piece of information presented to us, when making a decision.
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