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Anchoring effect

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias whereby individuals rely too heavily on an initial piece of information—known as the "anchor"—when making subsequent judgments or decisions, even if that anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant.^[1] First systematically demonstrated by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in their seminal 1974 study, the effect arises from the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, in which people start from the anchor and make insufficient adjustments, leading to estimates biased toward the initial value.^[1] This bias has been replicated across diverse contexts, including numerical estimations, probability assessments, and real-world decision-making scenarios.^[2] Key mechanisms underlying the anchoring effect include selective accessibility, where the anchor activates related knowledge that skews information retrieval and processing.^[3] According to the Selective Accessibility Model proposed by Mussweiler and Strack in 1997, individuals compare the target judgment to the anchor, making anchor-consistent information more cognitively accessible and thus more influential.^[3] Factors such as cognitive load, expertise, and emotional state can moderate the effect's magnitude; for instance, higher knowledge levels reduce susceptibility, while adolescents experiencing sadness show heightened vulnerability.^[4] Classic experiments illustrate the anchoring effect's robustness. In Tversky and Kahneman's foundational wheel-of-fortune task, participants who spun a wheel rigged to show 10 or 65 estimated the percentage of African countries in the United Nations as 25% or 45%, respectively, despite knowing the spin was random.^[1] Similarly, when high school students estimated the product of 1×2×3×4×5×6×7×8 based on ascending or descending sequences, those starting with larger numbers (8×7×...×1) provided higher medians (2,250 vs. 512), anchoring on partial products.^[1] These findings persist even under accuracy incentives, underscoring the heuristic's automaticity.^[2] The anchoring effect manifests in practical domains, influencing economic, legal, and social decisions. In negotiations, initial offers serve as anchors that shape final agreements, often favoring the proposer.^[4] Consumer behavior is affected by reference prices; for example, a high suggested retail price can make a discounted item seem like a bargain, increasing purchase likelihood.^[4] In judicial settings, arbitrary anchors like suggested sentence lengths bias sentencing recommendations.^[2] Recent research highlights its relevance in adolescent decision-making, where arbitrary anchors (e.g., social security number digits) can distort willingness to pay for goods.^[4]

Definition and Overview

Core Definition

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias in which an individual's judgments or decisions are influenced by an initial piece of information, known as the "anchor," which serves as a reference point even when it is arbitrary or irrelevant.^[1] This bias leads people to rely too heavily on the anchor, resulting in estimates or evaluations that are biased toward it rather than being based solely on available evidence.^[5] In the basic process, exposure to the anchor shapes subsequent estimates through an initial reliance that is not fully corrected. For instance, in a study where participants spun a wheel of fortune rigged to show either 10 or 65 and then estimated the percentage of African countries in the United Nations, the median estimates were 25% and 45%, respectively, demonstrating how random anchors systematically biased responses despite their irrelevance.^[1] Unlike confirmation bias, which involves selectively seeking or interpreting information to support preexisting beliefs, the anchoring effect specifically concerns the undue weight given to the initial anchor without necessarily involving active confirmation-seeking.^[6] A simple illustrative example is estimating the height of the Eiffel Tower after being asked whether it is higher or lower than a low value (e.g., 200 meters) versus a high value (e.g., 1,000 meters); responses to the low anchor tend to be lower overall than those to the high anchor, showing the anchor's pull on judgment. This effect is part of broader heuristics used in judgment under uncertainty.^[1]

Significance in Cognitive Biases

The anchoring effect serves as a foundational example of heuristic-based thinking within the heuristics and biases program developed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, illustrating how individuals rely on mental shortcuts that systematically deviate from rational norms in judgment and decision-making. This bias underscores the limitations of human cognition in processing uncertainty, where initial reference points unduly influence subsequent estimates, even when those anchors are arbitrary or irrelevant.^[7] In the context of bounded rationality, the anchoring effect exemplifies how cognitive constraints lead to predictable errors in probability estimation, valuation, and prediction tasks, challenging the assumptions of classical economic models that presume fully rational agents. Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality, which posits that decision-makers operate under limited information and cognitive capacity, is vividly demonstrated through anchoring, as people insufficiently adjust from initial anchors, resulting in biased outcomes that persist across diverse domains. These systematic deviations highlight the gap between normative rationality and actual human behavior, informing behavioral economics by revealing how anchors can distort resource allocation and risk assessment. The anchoring effect aligns closely with dual-process theory, particularly as articulated by Kahneman, where it predominantly operates through System 1—fast, intuitive, and automatic thinking—that generates quick judgments without deliberate scrutiny. In contrast, System 2 involves slower, analytical processing that could mitigate anchoring if engaged, but often fails to do so under time pressure or cognitive load, allowing intuitive biases to prevail. This interplay explains why anchoring infiltrates everyday decisions, reinforcing the theory's emphasis on the default dominance of effortless cognition. Beyond individual judgments, the anchoring effect contributes to overconfidence in forecasts by anchoring predictions to initial values, leading to narrower confidence intervals than warranted and inflated certainty in probabilistic assessments. In economic markets, this manifests as inefficiencies, such as anchored stock valuations that delay price corrections and exacerbate bubbles or crashes. Similarly, in policy-making, anchoring can skew public estimates of costs or benefits, resulting in suboptimal resource distribution, as seen in negotiations where initial proposals anchor final agreements.

History and Development

Origins in Psychological Research

The anchoring effect was discovered by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman through a series of experiments conducted between 1971 and 1974, marking a key contribution to cognitive psychology. Their findings were first formally presented in the influential 1974 paper "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," published in the journal Science.^[8] This work built on their ongoing collaboration, which began in the early 1970s, to explore how people make probabilistic judgments in uncertain situations.^[8] The research emerged within broader studies on systematic errors in human judgment, directly challenging the prevailing economic assumption of human rationality as posited in classical decision theory. Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated that individuals often rely on simplifying mental shortcuts, or heuristics, rather than precise calculations, leading to predictable biases that deviate from optimal reasoning.^[8] This perspective shifted focus from viewing judgment errors as random noise to recognizing them as consequences of adaptive cognitive processes.^[8] In their early theoretical framing, the anchoring effect was integrated into a trio of core heuristics—representativeness, availability, and anchoring-and-adjustment—that govern intuitive judgments under uncertainty. Specifically, anchoring was described as a process where an initial value, or anchor, influences subsequent estimates, even when the anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant, due to insufficient mental adjustment from that starting point.^[8] The initial experiments illustrating this bias involved tasks requiring numerical estimates. In one seminal demonstration, participants were asked to estimate the percentage of African countries in the United Nations after spinning a rigged wheel of fortune that landed on either 10 or 65. Those exposed to the lower anchor provided median estimates of 25% and 45%, respectively, revealing a clear pull toward the irrelevant starting value despite incentives for accuracy.^[8]

Evolution and Key Milestones

Following the foundational work on the anchoring effect in the 1970s, research in the 1980s and 1990s increasingly integrated the bias into behavioral economics, highlighting its implications for decision-making under uncertainty and challenging traditional rational choice models. This period saw anchoring applied to economic judgments, such as pricing and valuation, demonstrating its robustness across numerical and non-numerical domains.^[9] A pivotal recognition came in 2002 when Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for integrating psychological research, including the anchoring effect, into economic science, thereby elevating its status as a core mechanism in prospect theory and behavioral decision theory. This accolade underscored anchoring's role in explaining systematic deviations from economic rationality. Theoretical progress advanced in 1999 with Mussweiler and Strack's selective accessibility model, which posits that anchors influence judgments by selectively increasing the availability of consistent information in memory, rather than solely through adjustment.^[10] Building on this, Epley and Gilovich's 2001 study revived the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic by showing that insufficient adjustment from self-generated anchors produces the effect, emphasizing cognitive effort limitations in the process.^[11] The 2000s marked a shift toward neuroscientific investigation, with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies revealing prefrontal cortex activation, particularly in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, during anchor-based adjustments in mentalizing tasks.^[12] These findings linked anchoring to executive control processes, providing biological evidence for the heuristic's operation. By the 2020s, research extended to artificial intelligence ethics, with 2024 studies on large language models (LLMs) demonstrating anchoring biases in generated judgments, such as numerical estimates influenced by initial prompts.^[13] Complementary 2025 analyses showed that chain-of-thought reasoning techniques mitigate this bias in LLMs by promoting step-by-step deliberation, akin to human debiasing strategies.^[14]

Experimental Evidence

Seminal Studies

One of the foundational demonstrations of the anchoring effect came from Tversky and Kahneman's 1974 study, where participants were first asked to spin a rigged wheel of fortune that always stopped at either 10 or 65, ostensibly to determine group assignment but serving as an irrelevant anchor. They then estimated the percentage of African countries in the United Nations; those who saw 10 provided a median estimate of 25%, while those who saw 65 estimated 45%, despite the wheel's number having no relation to the target question.^[1] In the same 1974 paper, Tversky and Kahneman illustrated anchoring in numerical tasks by asking separate groups to estimate the product of the numbers 1 through 8, presented in ascending order (1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8) or descending order (8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1), with only 5 seconds allowed for calculation. The ascending sequence anchored participants to lower partial products, yielding a median estimate of 512, whereas the descending sequence led to a median of 2,250; the true value is 40,320 in both cases.^[1] A seminal replication emphasizing the robustness of anchoring with extreme and irrelevant values was Strack and Mussweiler's 1997 experiment on estimates of Mahatma Gandhi's age at death. Participants in one condition were asked if Gandhi died before or after age 9 before providing an absolute estimate, resulting in a mean of 50 years; the other condition used age 140 as the anchor, yielding a mean estimate of 67 years, showing assimilation toward even implausible anchors.^[3] Early 1970s studies, building directly on these findings, confirmed that anchoring persists with unrelated or arbitrary information, such as random numbers unrelated to the judgment task, demonstrating the bias's influence beyond informative starting points.^[1]

Research Methodologies

Research on the anchoring effect employs two primary experimental paradigms: absolute anchoring and relative anchoring. In absolute anchoring, participants are presented with a numeric anchor—often a random or arbitrary value—and asked to provide a direct estimate for a target quantity, such as the length of the Mississippi River or the population of a city, without explicit comparison to the anchor.^[15] This paradigm isolates the influence of the anchor on standalone judgments. In contrast, relative anchoring involves an initial comparative judgment, where participants assess whether the target quantity is higher or lower than the provided anchor, followed by an absolute estimate; this sequential process, as introduced in seminal work, heightens the anchor's impact by engaging participants more deeply with the value.^[15] Measurement of the anchoring effect typically compares pre-anchor baseline estimates (obtained without exposure to an anchor) or no-anchor control conditions against post-anchor estimates from the same or parallel participant groups. The magnitude of the bias is quantified as the difference in mean estimates between high-anchor and low-anchor conditions, standardized using Cohen's d to assess effect size, where values around 0.5 indicate medium effects and higher values reflect robust biases.^[16] This approach allows researchers to evaluate the directional pull of the anchor while controlling for individual variability in knowledge or estimation tendencies.^[17] To mitigate demand characteristics—cues that might lead participants to infer and conform to experimental hypotheses—studies incorporate irrelevant anchors, such as unrelated numbers (e.g., ID codes or zip codes) presented without direct ties to the target, or blinded procedures where anchors are generated randomly via tools like a wheel of fortune or dice to obscure their purpose.^[18] Self-report questions post-experiment further probe perceived influence, confirming that effects persist even when participants deny awareness of the anchor's role, thus isolating genuine cognitive bias from strategic responding.^[19] Quantitative metrics focus on the adjustment magnitude from the anchor, often modeled using a logarithmic pull where the final estimate approximates a weighted geometric mean: \log(\text{estimate}) = \alpha \log(\text{[anchor](/page/Anchor)}) + (1 - \alpha) \log(\text{true value}), with \alpha (the anchoring index, ranging from 0 to 1) representing the degree of insufficient adjustment; values closer to 1 indicate stronger anchoring, derived via regression on log-transformed data across multiple trials.^[20] This model captures the nonlinear assimilation toward the anchor, prioritizing conceptual fit over exhaustive parameter estimation. Recent methodologies, including large-scale online surveys for scalable participant recruitment and data collection as in the 2022 Open Anchoring Quest dataset, enable replication with diverse demographics while maintaining random anchor assignment.^[21] Additionally, AI-simulated anchors using large language models (e.g., GPT-4o) in virtual scenarios like price negotiations generate dynamic, context-specific anchors, facilitating simulations of human-like interactions and assessment of bias in automated systems at unprecedented volumes.^[22]

Underlying Mechanisms

Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

The anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic posits that individuals form judgments under uncertainty by starting with an initial value, or anchor, and then making adjustments to reach a final estimate, but these adjustments are typically insufficient due to cognitive limitations.^[8] This process occurs because decision-makers mentally represent the anchor as a starting point and incrementally adjust upward or downward based on available information, yet they often stop prematurely when the mental effort required for further adjustment outweighs perceived benefits. Empirical support for this heuristic comes from studies demonstrating that the extent of adjustment varies with motivation and cognitive resources; for instance, when participants are incentivized for accuracy or given more time, they adjust further from the anchor, reducing the bias, as outlined in the effort-accuracy framework. In this model, adjustment is an effortful process akin to a search for plausible reasons to deviate from the anchor, and insufficient adjustment arises because people cease searching once a satisfactory estimate is reached, even if it remains biased. Mathematically, the final judgment J can be represented as J = A + \Delta, where A is the anchor value and \Delta is the adjustment magnitude, which is often smaller in absolute value than needed for an unbiased estimate due to underadjustment.^[8] This underadjustment leads to asymmetric effects, particularly in estimation tasks where a low anchor results in underestimates because adjustments are "lazy" and fail to fully compensate for the initial bias. A classic example is the estimation of the percentage of African countries in the United Nations, where participants spun a wheel to generate a random anchor (e.g., 10% or 65%); those with the low anchor estimated around 25%, insufficiently adjusting upward, while those with the high anchor estimated around 45%, insufficiently adjusting downward.^[8]

Selective Accessibility

The selective accessibility model posits that anchoring effects arise from a memory-based process in which exposure to an anchor prompts hypothesis-testing, specifically evaluating whether the target stimulus shares similarities with the anchor. This confirmatory strategy, rather than disconfirmatory testing, leads to the selective activation and retrieval of anchor-consistent knowledge from semantic memory networks. For instance, a high numerical anchor for estimating a value, such as the price of a used car, triggers consideration of whether the target matches that high value, thereby priming and increasing the accessibility of related high-value exemplars like luxury brands. In this process, anchors function as primes that spread activation through associative memory structures, skewing the information retrieved during subsequent judgments toward content that aligns with the anchor's implications. This semantic priming occurs automatically and influences the content of thought without necessarily altering the perceived extremity of the anchor itself, resulting in biased absolute judgments that assimilate toward the anchor. Empirical evidence from reaction time studies supports this mechanism: in lexical decision tasks following an anchoring task, participants exhibited faster recognition of anchor-consistent words (e.g., "Mercedes" after a high anchor of 40,000 Deutsche Marks for car value) compared to inconsistent ones (e.g., "Fiat"), indicating heightened accessibility of primed knowledge. Unlike the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, which emphasizes a sequential correction from an initial anchor value, selective accessibility highlights pre-adjustment priming effects where the anchor biases the very information considered in forming the judgment. This model integrates with adjustment processes by suggesting that the skewed accessibility shapes the direction and extent of any subsequent adjustments, though the core bias originates from the initial hypothesis-consistent retrieval.

Complementary Theories

Attitude change theories provide a supplementary framework for understanding anchoring by positing that anchors function as reference points that alter attitudes through contrast effects, where extreme anchors are discounted or counterargued, leading to weaker influences on judgments compared to moderate ones.^[23] This perspective contrasts with assimilation-based models, suggesting that perceived implausibility of anchors triggers metacognitive processes that mitigate their impact, as demonstrated in experiments where more extreme numerical anchors produced smaller shifts in estimates than moderate ones.^[24] Extremeness aversion offers another complementary explanation, rooted in the preference for compromise options that avoid extremes, which causes extreme anchors to drive judgments toward more central values in decision sets.^[25] In choice scenarios, this aversion manifests as conservative adjustments from anchors, reducing the bias's magnitude when options are presented alongside the anchor, thereby attributing part of anchoring to a motivational pull toward moderation rather than purely cognitive insufficient adjustment.^[26] An evolutionary perspective frames anchoring as an adaptive mechanism for expediting decisions in resource-scarce, uncertain environments, where reliance on initial cues would have conferred survival advantages by enabling fast approximations despite incomplete information.^[27] This bias is seen as arising from bounded implementations of Bayesian updating, in which cognitive limitations prevent full integration of evidence, resulting in systematic errors that were nonetheless efficient heuristics in ancestral contexts.^[28] From the viewpoint of numerical cognition, anchoring leverages the imprecise, spatially organized representation of magnitudes on the mental number line, where initial numerical cues bias subsequent magnitude estimations due to nonlinear scaling that amplifies the influence of salient digits.^[9] A prominent example is the left-digit bias in pricing, where the leftmost digit serves as an anchor, causing consumers to perceive $2.99 as significantly cheaper than $3.00 despite the minimal actual difference, exploiting the compressed encoding of small numbers in cognitive representations.

Characteristics of the Bias

Persistence and Durability

Empirical studies demonstrate that the anchoring effect exhibits considerable durability, maintaining its influence on judgments even after significant time delays. For instance, in experiments involving estimates of historical events and environmental conditions, high or low anchors continued to bias participants' responses to a comparable degree after a one-week interval as they did immediately, with no significant diminution in effect magnitude.^[29] Similarly, uninformative anchors on product valuations persisted for up to eight weeks, with biases stabilizing after an initial decay period.^[30] This persistence arises from mechanisms involving memory consolidation, where the anchor selectively enhances the accessibility of consistent information, fostering deeper cognitive processing that resists natural decay. Self-generated anchor-related thoughts, as opposed to externally imposed ones, further promote this consolidation by integrating the anchor more firmly into memory schemas, thereby prolonging its impact without requiring ongoing exposure.^[29] Factors such as repetition can amplify the anchoring effect's endurance, particularly in applied contexts like advertising or e-commerce. When anchors are presented multiple times—such as three exposures versus one in online price estimation tasks—the bias strengthens significantly, as repeated anchors consolidate their influence on value perceptions and reduce variability in subsequent judgments.^[31] Quantitative models of anchoring decay indicate that while the bias may halve over extended periods due to cognitive interference or forgetting, it rarely dissipates entirely without deliberate interventions like explicit debiasing, maintaining a residual influence that underscores the heuristic's robustness over time.^[30]

Resistance to Debiasing

The anchoring effect demonstrates significant resistance to debiasing efforts, particularly those relying on awareness or explicit instructions to participants. Empirical studies consistently show that forewarning individuals about the potential for anchoring bias can attenuate the effect, but it rarely eliminates it entirely. For instance, when participants are informed in advance that an initial value may bias their judgments, the magnitude of the anchoring influence decreases, yet substantial residual effects persist across various tasks, as evidenced by reduced but still significant adjustment patterns in estimation experiments.^[32] This persistence arises primarily from unconscious cognitive processes, including priming mechanisms that subtly activate anchor-consistent information without deliberate awareness. The selective accessibility model posits that exposure to an anchor increases the availability of related thoughts in memory, making it difficult for conscious efforts to override this automatic retrieval. Additionally, overconfidence in the sufficiency of one's adjustments exacerbates the issue, as individuals often believe they have adequately compensated for the anchor, leading to insufficient corrections in judgments. A notable example of this resistance occurs in legal decision-making, where even experienced judges remain influenced by prosecutorial demands despite being informed of the anchor's irrelevance. In one study, German judges reviewed a case file and were told that the prosecutor's suggested sentence was determined by a dice roll rather than case merits; nonetheless, high-anchor conditions led to harsher sentences (mean of 6.5 months) compared to low-anchor conditions (mean of 5.4 months), with the effect persisting regardless of the disclosure. This illustrates how domain expertise and explicit knowledge fail to fully counteract anchoring in high-stakes professional contexts.^[33] Recent research in AI-assisted decision-making further highlights these challenges, showing that interactive effects between AI-sourced anchors and human judgments result in biased outcomes, with high anchors from AI leading to significantly elevated scores compared to human sources; the study underscores the need for robust interventions such as the "consider-the-opposite" strategy.^[34]

Ubiquity Across Contexts

The anchoring effect demonstrates remarkable ubiquity, manifesting robustly across a wide array of non-experimental settings and judgment types, as evidenced by comprehensive meta-analyses encompassing thousands of effect sizes. These reviews reveal a large overall effect (Cohen's d = 0.824), persisting in both probabilistic and numerical tasks with minimal attenuation after corrections for publication bias, underscoring its pervasive influence on human cognition beyond controlled laboratory conditions.^[35] In legal domains, the effect prominently appears in sentencing decisions, where meta-analyses of 29 studies involving over 8,500 participants show that arbitrary numerical anchors bias verdicts toward the anchor value, with moderate to large effect sizes (d ranging from 0.58 to 0.91) moderated by factors like legal expertise and anchor relevance.^[36] Similarly, in medical contexts, anchoring on initial patient information can delay critical diagnoses; for instance, when congestive heart failure is mentioned in emergency visit notes, physicians exhibit reduced testing for pulmonary embolism, increasing time to diagnosis by an average of 15.5 minutes and thereby extending the untreated duration of potentially life-threatening conditions.^[37] The bias extends to everyday scenarios, such as consumer shopping, where an initial high price acts as an anchor, making subsequent discounted options appear more valuable and influencing buying choices—for example, a shirt reduced from $100 to $60 feels like a superior deal compared to the same item priced directly at $60.^[38] In business intelligence applications, dashboard metrics often introduce plausible anchors that skew managerial forecasts; experimental evidence indicates that an initial sales projection of $5,000 billion on a BI interface biases estimates toward $3,990 billion, even when underlying data supports $3,818 billion, highlighting how such tools inadvertently perpetuate the effect in professional forecasting.^[39] Initial cross-cultural investigations, primarily drawn from Western samples, consistently replicate the anchoring effect's presence in numerical and probabilistic judgments, though subsequent analyses across 10 countries reveal heterogeneity, with cultural values like intellectual autonomy inversely related to effect magnitude.^[40] This broad applicability underscores the anchoring effect's role in real-world decision-making across individual and professional spheres.

Manifestations in Groups

In group settings, the anchoring effect manifests through shared reference points that foster consensus bias, where collective judgments converge around an initial anchor rather than objective evidence. For instance, in jury deliberations, the first member's proposed sentence length or damages award serves as a salient anchor, pulling the group's final verdict toward that value even when subsequent arguments suggest otherwise. A meta-analysis of 29 studies involving over 8,500 participants found significant anchoring effects in legal decision-making, including jury decisions, with an average effect size of d = 0.58 for comparisons including control groups, indicating that arbitrary numerical suggestions reliably bias group-awarded penalties and compensations.^[41] This group-level anchoring is often amplified by mechanisms such as informational cascades, in which the initial anchor propagates through social conformity, prompting members to align their estimates with the emerging group norm to avoid dissent. In centralized group structures, where one individual dominates influence, conformity to the leader's anchored preference exacerbates the bias, as subordinates adjust insufficiently from the reference point. Empirical evidence from experimental studies shows that such dynamics can make group judgments more susceptible to anchoring than individual ones; for example, in groups with hierarchical trust networks, the anchoring effect index was significantly higher than for solo decision-makers (Wilcoxon z = 1.782, p = 0.075), leading to estimates biased up to nearly twice as strongly in low-anchor conditions compared to independent assessments. Recent research also indicates that social network structure moderates group anchoring, with dense networks reducing bias compared to sparse or centralized ones.^[42]^[42] In business contexts, team forecasting exemplifies this manifestation, where a leader's preliminary numerical projection anchors subsequent discussions and final outputs, often resulting in overly conservative or optimistic forecasts detached from market realities. A study of 45 financial professionals in Indonesian firms revealed that anchoring on initial estimates explained 34% of the variance in budgeting errors (β = 0.58, p < 0.01), with hierarchical team dynamics intensifying the bias through pooled preferences that reinforce the starting figure.^[43] These findings underscore how shared anchors in collaborative environments can entrench errors, particularly when group motivation emphasizes cooperation over critical scrutiny.

Moderating Factors

Cognitive and Affective Influences

Cognitive busyness, or high mental load, significantly increases susceptibility to the anchoring effect by limiting the cognitive resources available for adjustment from the initial anchor. When individuals are engaged in demanding tasks or multitasking, their ability to critically evaluate and sufficiently adjust away from the anchor diminishes, leading to stronger biases in judgments. For instance, experimental evidence demonstrates that imposing a secondary cognitive load during estimation tasks results in larger anchoring effects, as participants make fewer and smaller adjustments due to constrained processing capacity. This aligns with the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic, where effortful correction is hindered under load, exacerbating reliance on the anchor.^[44]^[45] Mood states exert a notable influence on anchoring susceptibility, with positive and negative emotions moderating the bias through distinct mechanisms. Positive mood, induced via recall of uplifting events or exposure to humorous stimuli, enhances cognitive flexibility and promotes broader information integration, thereby reducing anchoring by facilitating more thorough adjustments from the anchor. In contrast, negative moods, such as sadness, foster conservatism and narrowed attention, increasing reliance on the anchor and amplifying the bias, as evidenced in studies from the early 2000s showing greater anchoring in sad participants compared to those in neutral or happy states. These effects highlight how affective states alter the motivational drive for adjustment, with optimism in positive moods countering the bias more effectively than the caution induced by negative emotions.^[46]^[47] Overconfidence in one's knowledge or judgment accuracy further moderates anchoring by reducing the extent of adjustment from the anchor. Individuals with high overconfidence perceive their initial assessments as reliable, leading them to exert less effort in correcting toward the anchor and resulting in persistent bias. Research testing the anchoring-and-adjustment model reveals that overconfident estimators produce wider confidence intervals but still exhibit insufficient adjustment, as their inflated self-perceived accuracy discourages thorough reevaluation. This interaction underscores overconfidence as a cognitive factor that entrenches anchoring, particularly in domains requiring precise numerical or probabilistic judgments.^[48]^[49] In high-stress environments like prehospital care, affective influences such as acute stress amplify anchoring during triage decisions, where initial patient presentations serve as potent anchors. A 2025 scoping review of cognitive biases in prehospital critical care identifies anchoring as one of the most prevalent, noting that the intense pressure and time constraints heighten emotional arousal, impairing adjustment and leading to diagnostic errors in triage prioritization. For example, paramedics under stress may overly fixate on early symptoms, delaying recognition of evolving conditions, thus illustrating how transient affective states in real-world settings intensify the bias beyond laboratory conditions.^[50]

Individual Traits and Experiences

Individual differences in personality traits significantly moderate susceptibility to the anchoring effect. Individuals high in conscientiousness, characterized by greater diligence and self-discipline, exhibit reduced anchoring bias compared to those low in this trait, as they tend to engage in more thorough information processing and adjustment from initial anchors.^[51] In contrast, extraversion is associated with heightened anchoring, particularly in social contexts where individuals may be more influenced by external cues or group-provided anchors due to their outgoing nature and sensitivity to social dynamics.^[52] Cognitive ability also plays a key role in mitigating the anchoring effect. Higher levels of cognitive ability, such as measured by IQ or related tasks, correlate with better adjustment away from anchors, leading to smaller bias magnitudes, though the effect does not eliminate anchoring entirely.^[53] This relationship aligns with dual-process theories, where more reflective thinkers leverage analytical skills to counteract initial biases more effectively.^[54] Prior experience in a domain further diminishes anchoring proneness among experts. For instance, real estate agents, with their extensive familiarity in property valuation, show less influence from arbitrary listing prices as anchors compared to novices, although they remain partially susceptible.^[55] This expertise effect stems from accumulated knowledge that facilitates more accurate adjustments and reliance on relevant cues over irrelevant anchors. The need for cognition (NFC), reflecting an individual's intrinsic motivation to engage in effortful thinking, promotes more thorough adjustments from anchors. High-NFC individuals demonstrate greater resistance to anchoring by expending more cognitive resources to evaluate and revise initial estimates.^[44]

Cultural and Motivational Elements

The anchoring effect exhibits notable cultural variations, particularly in social contexts where collectivistic societies demonstrate stronger susceptibility compared to individualistic ones. Research comparing students from India (a collectivistic, Eastern culture) and Poland (an individualistic, Western culture) found that Indian participants displayed a significantly higher anchoring indicator of 72.8%, indicating greater reliance on initial anchors, while Polish participants showed only 35.5%. This difference is attributed to holistic thinking patterns prevalent in collectivistic cultures, which may enhance the integration of contextual cues like anchors in social judgments.^[56] Motivational elements play a critical role in modulating anchoring susceptibility, with goal orientation directly influencing adjustment from anchors. When individuals are motivated by high accuracy goals—such as through monetary incentives for precise estimates—they tend to exert more effort in adjusting away from the provided anchor, thereby attenuating the bias.^[17] Extremeness aversion further explains anchoring in choice scenarios, where decision-makers avoid extreme options, resulting in insufficient adjustments from anchors to maintain moderate positions.^[25]

Real-World Applications

Negotiations and Persuasion

In negotiations, the first offer serves as a powerful anchor that influences subsequent concessions and final agreements, often providing a substantial advantage to the party making the initial proposal. Research demonstrates that negotiators who make the first offer achieve better economic outcomes, with final settlement prices more closely aligned with their anchor than with subsequent counteroffers, due to the anchoring effect's pull on judgment. For instance, in experimental dyadic bargaining scenarios, the first mover's offer predicted final outcomes more strongly than later adjustments. This advantage arises because counterparts insufficiently adjust their counteroffers away from the initial anchor, assimilating new information selectively toward it rather than fully reevaluating based on independent standards.^[57] The tendency for insufficient adjustment is particularly evident in how negotiators respond to an opponent's first offer. When presented with an extreme initial proposal, individuals start from that anchor and make concessions that fall short of what rational analysis might suggest, resulting in asymmetric outcomes favoring the anchor-setter. Studies show this pattern holds across both face-to-face and written negotiations, where the anchor's influence persists even when negotiators are aware of it, as adjustments are psychologically constrained by the initial reference point. In group settings, this can amplify if multiple members converge on the same anchor, though the core dyadic effect remains dominant.^[57] Beyond pure bargaining, the anchoring effect plays a key role in persuasion by shaping the magnitude of belief change through initial arguments. When exposed to an extreme starting position in debates or sales pitches, audiences anchor their evaluations to that point, leading to moderated shifts in opinion that are insufficiently distant from the original anchor. For example, in persuasive communications, an initial high estimate of a problem's severity can anchor perceptions, making subsequent moderate proposals seem more reasonable and increasing acceptance rates compared to starting from a neutral baseline. This mechanism underlies why order of presentation matters in influence attempts, with early anchors biasing the interpretive frame for later information. A practical illustration occurs in salary negotiations, where an employer's posted range or initial offer anchors the applicant's expectations and counteroffers. If a job listing specifies a salary band of $80,000–$100,000, candidates often anchor to the lower end when proposing their desired pay, leading to final agreements closer to that floor despite the applicant's potentially higher market value. Experimental evidence confirms that such anchors influence the nature of counteroffers, underscoring the need for independent valuation to mitigate the bias.^[58]

Marketing and Pricing

In marketing, the anchoring effect is frequently exploited through pricing strategies that establish an initial reference point to shape consumer perceptions of value. Retailers often display an original higher price alongside a discounted price, such as "Was $100, now $70," which serves as an anchor making the lower price appear as a superior deal compared to evaluating the discounted price in isolation. Experimental research demonstrates that this reference price anchoring significantly influences purchase intentions, with consumers perceiving greater savings and value when the original price is presented as the anchor, leading to a 38% increase in purchase likelihood in e-commerce settings.^[59]^[51] Decoy pricing leverages anchoring by introducing an inferior option that shifts preferences toward a target product without directly competing on value. In a classic example, subscription bundles for The Economist included a web-only option at $59, a print-only option at $125, and a combined print-and-web option at $125; the print-only decoy anchored the combined option as more attractive despite identical pricing, increasing selections of the target by highlighting its relative superiority. This asymmetric dominance effect, where the decoy anchors the comparison, was first empirically demonstrated in consumer choice experiments, showing it systematically alters preferences across product categories.^[60] Incidental anchors, such as nearby prices or formatting, further bias value perception without explicit intent. The left-digit effect exemplifies this, where prices like $99 are anchored by the "9" in the tens place, perceived as closer to $90 than $100, enhancing affordability illusions even for small differences. Studies confirm this anchoring occurs subconsciously during price cognition, with consumers rating $2.99 as significantly lower than $3.00 due to the leftmost digit's disproportionate influence on overall evaluation.^[61]^[62] Sorting effects in price displays also utilize anchoring by presenting options from high to low, establishing the highest price as an extreme anchor that makes mid-range alternatives seem more reasonable and boosts their sales. For instance, restaurant menus sorted descendingly anchor diners to premium items first, increasing uptake of moderately priced entrees by contrasting them against the high end. Research on consumer price judgments supports this, indicating that high-to-low sorting amplifies anchoring, leading to adjusted perceptions that favor central options over absolute low-end choices.^[63]^[51]

Professional Decision-Making

In professional decision-making, the anchoring effect significantly influences judgments in high-stakes domains such as medicine, where initial symptoms or presentations can bias clinicians toward overly pessimistic or optimistic prognoses and treatment durations. For instance, in prehospital critical care settings, anchoring on early vital signs or patient reports has been shown to skew triage decisions, leading to delayed interventions in conditions like sepsis or trauma. A 2025 scoping review of cognitive biases in prehospital emergency medicine identified anchoring as one of the most prevalent biases, occurring when paramedics fixate on initial findings, thereby affecting the perceived severity and urgency of care. Similarly, anchoring on initial diagnostic hypotheses can prolong hospital stays or alter prognosis estimates, as evidenced by studies demonstrating that physicians who receive an initial low-severity anchor adjust subsequent assessments insufficiently, even with contradictory evidence.^[50]^[37] In the legal field, anchoring manifests prominently during jury deliberations and sentencing, where the prosecutor's initial demand or suggested award serves as a reference point that inflates final damage amounts or penalties. Empirical research on real litigation cases reveals that high-anchor demands from plaintiffs lead to significantly higher jury awards compared to low-anchor scenarios, with adjustments often insufficient to neutralize the bias. A meta-analysis of anchoring in legal decision-making confirms this effect across numerical judgments, including civil damages and criminal sentencing, where even expert judges and jurors exhibit partial reliance on arbitrary initial figures. For example, in damage award trials, prosecutorial or plaintiff anchors as high as 10 times the median outcome have been shown to elevate verdicts, underscoring the bias's robustness in adversarial contexts. Recent analyses further highlight how initial offers anchor jurors to extreme valuations, complicating fair assessments of liability and compensation.^[64]^[65]^[66] Emerging research in artificial intelligence and technology demonstrates that large language models (LLMs) are susceptible to anchoring, mirroring human biases in their outputs for reasoning and prediction tasks. When prompted with an initial numerical or categorical anchor, LLMs tend to generate responses biased toward that value, even in unrelated subsequent queries, as shown in experimental studies where models like GPT-4 exhibited anchoring effects in estimation tasks. A 2025 investigation into anchoring in LLMs found this bias persists across domains, including financial forecasting and ethical dilemmas, but can be partially mitigated through advanced prompting techniques. These findings highlight the need for debiasing protocols in AI-assisted professional tools, such as decision-support systems in tech development.^[67]^[68]^[69] In management and organizational contexts, anchoring affects performance appraisals, where first impressions or initial metrics heavily influence overall evaluations, often leading to skewed ratings and resource allocations. Studies involving managers using AI-driven appraisal tools reveal that an initial high or low performance anchor—such as early project feedback—biases final scores, with raters adjusting only marginally despite comprehensive data reviews. A 2025 experimental analysis demonstrated that AI-generated initial ratings anchored human judgments, particularly in hybrid human-AI systems. This bias is exacerbated in annual reviews, where early interactions set a persistent reference, potentially perpetuating inequities in promotions and compensation.^[70]

Strategies for Mitigation

Debiasing Techniques

One effective approach to counteracting the anchoring effect involves awareness training, which educates individuals about the bias and its mechanisms to promote more deliberate decision-making. Studies have shown that such training can significantly reduce the influence of anchoring, with game-based interventions retaining debiasing effects over several weeks. For instance, combined slideshow and game training has been found to mitigate anchoring bias in estimation tasks, with reductions in bias magnitude observed immediately and persisting for up to four weeks post-training. However, awareness alone often proves incomplete, as it may not fully eliminate the bias without additional strategies; one complementary method is the "consider-the-opposite" technique, which prompts individuals to actively generate and evaluate arguments against the initial anchor, leading to more balanced judgments. Experimental evidence demonstrates that this strategy compensates for selective information processing triggered by anchors, reducing bias in social and numerical estimation contexts. Counter-anchoring represents another targeted debiasing method, particularly useful in interactive settings like negotiations, where introducing an alternative anchor can balance the initial reference point and moderate its pull. In negotiation scenarios, parties can employ this by presenting a counter-offer that serves as a new reference, such as averaging a high initial demand with a lower realistic proposal to shift perceptions toward a midpoint. Research on supplier evaluations illustrates that providing contrasting anchors helps mitigate asymmetric effects, with low anchors increasing perceived performance ratings when paired with high alternatives, thereby improving selection decisions. This technique leverages the same cognitive mechanism as anchoring but redirects it toward equilibrium, though its success depends on the credibility and timing of the counter-anchor. Process interventions focus on structuring decision-making to encourage thorough adjustment away from the anchor, often through tools that promote extended deliberation or systematic review. Checklists, for example, guide users to verify assumptions, question the origin of numerical inputs, and consider multiple data sources before finalizing estimates, thereby interrupting insufficient adjustment. In clinical and managerial contexts, allocating deliberate time for reflection—such as pausing to override intuitive responses—activates analytical processing, reducing reliance on the anchor in controlled tasks involving probabilistic judgments. These interventions emphasize executive control, ensuring that decisions incorporate broader evidence rather than anchoring prematurely. Technological aids, including AI-driven tools, offer promising support for flagging potential anchors in real-time, especially in research-intensive fields like social work. Recent investigations highlight how AI assistants, when used judiciously, can mitigate anchoring by prompting verification of outputs against primary sources and independent brainstorming prior to integration. A 2025 study on AI-assisted social work research found that structured protocols—such as cross-checking AI-generated literature reviews and statistical analyses—reduced anchoring bias in hypothesis formulation and data interpretation, enhancing the reliability of findings in bias-prone processes. These tools function best as supplements to human oversight, alerting users to initial values that may unduly influence subsequent steps.

Challenges and Limitations

While debiasing techniques for the anchoring effect, such as considering the opposite, demonstrate efficacy in controlled individual settings, their application to group decision-making presents significant challenges due to shared anchors and collective dynamics that amplify or alter bias propagation.^[71] In group contexts, external anchors influence judgments beyond individual preferences, often requiring tailored interventions that account for social interactions, which standard methods do not fully address.^[72] Furthermore, these techniques necessitate cultural adaptations, as anchoring susceptibility varies across cultural groups, with replication studies revealing heterogeneous effects that demand context-specific modifications to ensure generalizability.^[73] Key challenges in mitigation include the risk of overcompensation, where strategies like considering the opposite lead to reverse anchoring, particularly when initial anchors are close to true values, resulting in judgments that overshoot in the opposite direction.^[74] This context-dependency is exacerbated by the need for high motivation; unconscious biases persist without sufficient awareness or incentive to engage debiasing efforts, as overconfidence and resistance to change hinder adoption in dynamic environments.^[75] In real-world applications, such as managerial evaluations, debiasing shows asymmetrical results—effectively countering high anchors but failing against low ones—further complicated by practical barriers like reluctance to acknowledge prior errors.^[76] Research gaps remain prominent, particularly in non-Western cultures, where methodological limitations and low statistical power have yielded insufficient evidence of cultural variability, underscoring the need for more diverse, high-powered studies.^[77] In emerging domains like artificial intelligence, anchoring biases in large language models (LLMs) persist despite mitigations; recent studies including a 2024 analysis on models like GPT-4 reveal that chain-of-thought prompting fails to reduce bias from "expert" anchors, highlighting incomplete fixes and the demand for novel approaches.^[13] Ethical considerations arise from the tension between intentional anchoring in public policy—such as nudges leveraging initial values to influence preferences, which risks manipulative elite control—and unintended anchoring in AI systems, where embedded biases can perpetuate inequities without transparency or accountability.^[78] In AI ethics, anchoring effects in decision aids raise concerns about overreliance on flawed recommendations, potentially amplifying discrimination unless proactively mitigated through rigorous bias audits.^[79]

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