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cognitive bias
The first number you hear dictates your future estimates.
A 1974 study showed that initial, irrelevant numbers significantly bias subsequent numerical estimations.
When participants were shown a wheel of fortune, their guesses for the number of nations in the UN clustered near the random number generated by the wheel. The brain uses the first available datum as a cognitive reference point for the entire problem. Your estimates are rarely as objective as you assume.
You are never making a judgment from a blank slate.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman (1974)
- What the check found
- The 1974 Science paper 'Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases' is correctly attributed and describes the wheel of fortune experiment as a foundational demonstration of the anchoring heuristic.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.