Does Providing Information About the Anchoring Heuristic Lessen the Effect?
Margaret H. Vashel · 2024
Anchoring is a cognitive heuristic in which an individual's estimates are influenced by a reference point or 'anchor'.It has been demonstrated across many domains and contexts.In this work, we examined whether participants could exert control to ignore or lessen the associative effect of anchors when instructed to do so.We hypothesized that participants' ability to ignore anchors would be inversely proportional to the difficulty of the estimation task.We conducted two studies employing a visual, numerical estimation task spanning three conditions and three levels of difficulty.In a control condition, participants were asked to provide an estimate without being presented with anchors.In an anchoring condition, participants were provided an anchor but were not instructed to ignore it.In a 'with instructions' condition, we informed participants about the anchoring heuristic and instructed them not to be influenced by anchors.Both studies replicated the basic anchoring heuristic.In Study 1, in trials in which the required estimate was difficult, participants were influenced by anchors despite being instructed to ignore them.In Study 2, we added a five-second pause before introducing anchors and requesting estimates.We reasoned that such a pause would enable participants to encapsulate their estimate and protect it from subsequent anchors.However, anchoring effects persisted.Overall, this work helps illuminate boundary conditions related to interactions between controlled and automatic processes.It points to limits in our ability to overcome the associative effects of anchors, particularly under high estimate uncertainty, and even when given time to develop estimates.v