Variations on anchoring: Sequential anchoring revisited

Abstract

The anchoring effect, the assimilation of judgment toward a previously considered value, has been shown using various experimental paradigms. We used several variations of the sequential anchoring paradigm, in which a numeric estimate influences a subsequent numeric estimate on the same scale, to investigate how anchoring is influenced by multiple anchors, a comparison question, and by a newly introduced debiasing procedure. We replicated the anchoring effect using the sequential anchoring paradigm and showed that, when two anchors of opposite directions are presented, the second seems to influence a subsequent judgment somewhat more. A comparison of a target with another object before the numerical estimate was not sufficient to elicit anchoring, but it might have increased the sequential anchoring effect. The debiasing procedure, based on providing reference points on the numerical scale, prevented the sequential anchoring effect. The results are in accord with the scale distortion theory of anchoring, but other theories may also account for the observed findings with additional adjustments.