Overcoming the Inevitable Anchoring Effect: Considering the Opposite Compensates for Selective Accessibility

Abstract

Anchoring effects—the assimilation of a numeric estimate to a previously considered standard—have proved to be remarkably robust. Results of two studies, however, demonstrate that anchoring can be reduced by applying a consider-the-opposite strategy. Based on the Selective Accessibility Model, which assumes that anchoring is mediated by the selectively increased accessibility of anchor-consistent knowledge, the authors hypothesized that increasing the accessibility of anchor-inconsistent knowledge mitigates the effect. Considering the opposite (i.e., generating reasons why an anchor is inappropriate) fulfills this objective and consequently proves to be a successful corrective strategy. In a real-world setting using experts as participants, Study 1 dem-onstrated that listing arguments that speak against a provided anchor value reduces the effect. Study 2 further revealed that the effects of anchoring and considering the opposite are additive.

Induction with uncertain categories: When do people consider the category alternatives?

“…Our findings on the effects of "response-cost" instructions on multiple-category reasoning are reminiscent of other findings in experiments that have tried to overcome the negative effects of cognitive heuristics in studies of judgmental anchoring (Mussweiler, Strack, & Pfeiffer, 2000), forecasting (Lovallo & Kahneman, 2003), social judgment (Lord et al, 1984), and probability judgment (Lagnado & Sloman, 2004). In each of these cases, the main focus has been on improving judgment and pre-In the present experiments, we tried to ensure that people used categories to make predictions rather than using a noncategorical approach (e.g., feature conjunction) by making it impossible to arrive at a prediction by just looking at feature pairings across exemplars.…”

Can Bonus Packs Mislead Consumers? A Demonstration of How Behavioural Consumer Research Can Inform Unfair Commercial Practices Law on the Example of the ECJ’s Mars Judgement

“…Third, the practice under investigation resembles situations in which a systematic bias, the anchoring effect, has been shown to occur. This is one of the first biases uncovered in psychology (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) and remarkably robust (Furnham and Boo 2011;Mussweiler et al 2000). Thus, although the case at hand has not been put under empirical test so far, the similarities with the anchoring effect allow for the formulation of specific expectations that can be tested in an empirical study.…”

“…It occurs even when anchor values are clearly uninformative, appears to be independent of a person's motivation to examine the issue at hand, and is not mitigated by explicit instructions to correct for the potential influence of the anchor (Mussweiler et al 2000). It has been shown across various domains, including the legal domain.…”

Willingness to Pay for the Subscription Fee of Public Broadcasting System

“…To evaluate the actual value of the good, people tend to adjust the value relative to the anchor. According to Mussweiler, Strack, and Pfeiffer (2000), the anchoring effect occurs because people selectively try to access knowledge which relates to the anchor. That is, when people hear the anchor, it stays in their head, and then people keep selectively accepting the information which has high relevance to the anchor.…”