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decision making
You make decisions based on the first thing you hear.
A 1974 experiment showed that asking participants if the population of a city was greater than 5 million or 200 thousand radically skewed their final estimates.
The brain uses the first piece of available information as a benchmark for all subsequent calculations. Even when the starting point is arbitrary, your mind struggles to adjust far enough away from it to reach an accurate conclusion.
Your opinion is often trapped by the first number you encounter.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Tversky and Kahneman 1974
- What the check found
- The 1974 paper is indeed the source of this experiment, and the effect is well-documented in psychology as the 'Anchoring and Adjustment' heuristic.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.