← all facts
decision making
You interpret early information as a fixed anchor.
The anchoring bias describes how the first number or piece of data you receive heavily influences all subsequent estimates.
If you are asked to estimate a quantity after being shown a large number, your answer will be higher than if you were primed with a small one, even when the number is irrelevant to the task. Your mind uses the first available value as a cognitive anchor, and you struggle to adjust your judgment far enough away from it.
Your final decision often starts with an arbitrary number.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman, 1974
- What the check found
- Tversky and Kahneman (1974) is the definitive citation for the anchoring and adjustment heuristic, and the claim correctly summarizes its core mechanism as described in the provided literature.
- 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.