What is the anchoring and adjustment bias? How does it impact your decisions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anchoring and adjustment bias takes something you know and adjusts it to estimate what you don’t know. The “bias” comes from the way that what you know skews your estimation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read more about the anchoring and adjustment bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
When we \u201canchor and adjust\u201d when making a judgment, we take a fact we know (or think we know) and adjust it to account for the fact we don\u2019t<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say, for example, that someone asks you to guess the population of Boston. You don\u2019t know the population of Boston, but you do <\/em>know the population of Worcester, and you know that Boston is quite a bit bigger than Worcester. So, using Worcester\u2019s population as your \u201canchor,\u201d you adjust upwards to make an \u201ceducated guess\u201d at the population of Boston. All good, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, studies have shown that people who \u201canchor and adjust\u201d guess incorrectly in entirely predictable ways<\/strong>. For example, people who use a lower number as an anchor\u2014e.g., using the population of Worcester to guess the population of Boston\u2014will tend to guess too low, whereas people using a higher number as an anchor\u2014e.g., using the population of New York<\/em> to guess Boston\u2019s\u2014will tend to guess high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The anchoring and adjustment bias occurs in nonquantitative guesses as well. For example, one study asked college students two questions: (1) How happy are you? and (2) How often are you dating? When the questions were ordered 1-2, there was little correlation between the two answers. When the order was reversed, however, so that the dating question came first, the correlation jumped nearly sixfold<\/em><\/strong>\u2014the students took their dating number and used it to determine whether they were happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economists conceptualize money as \u201cfungible\u201d\u2014that is, useful for a variety of consumption activities. But, through mental accounting, the Planner part of our personality curtails money\u2019s fungibility\u2014it earmarks specific amounts for specific purposes<\/strong>. Mental accounting will be familiar to anyone who has looked at their monthly paycheck and mentally deducted their recurring expenses\u2014rent, credit-card payments\u2014to see if they can afford the new device they\u2019ve been coveting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem is that we\u2019re not all equally adept at violating money\u2019s fungibility<\/strong>. To take an extreme case, a compulsive gambler will see his or her \u201crent\u201d funds as perfectly usable at a casino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is the anchoring and adjustment bias? How does it impact your decisions? The anchoring and adjustment bias takes something you know and adjusts it to estimate what you don’t know. The “bias” comes from the way that what you know skews your estimation. Read more about the anchoring and adjustment bias.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,25],"tags":[132],"class_list":["post-15670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-statistics","tag-nudge","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nMental Accounting<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n