anchor and adjust

Psychologists tell us that most people presented with a decision tend toward the “anchor and adjust” method - take what you think you know (your “anchor”) and make small adjustments until you arrive at a desireable answer for the question at hand. For example, if you are asked in what year Pocahontas died (and you do not have access to Wikipedia), you will most likely start with some related event that you know the date of and make a reasonable and logical adjustment from that point to arrive at your final guess.

What’s wrong with that? Nothing.

Unless your anchor is off.

When participants were asked “Is the population of Chicago more or less than 200,000″ and then asked to give their best estimate of the actual population of Chicago, the responses were typically not far from 200,000. When another group was asked “Is the population of Chicago more or less than 5 milion” and then asked to give an estimate, Chicago suddenly felt a lot more crowded. Because most people don’t have much relevant information stored in their memory for the population of Chicago, the only anchor they have is what is suggested to them in the question itself.

The human brain is much better at relative/comparative reasoning than absolute, so most of us naturally seek an anchor when confronted with a decision or problem. While this often helps us adjust to logical answers rather than making a guess with no information, assuming that information is correct can become a problem.

Behold the power of suggestion - be careful what you anchor to :)