The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic

The final heuristic we will cover is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. A common strategy in making estimates is to start with some initial value (or “anchor”) and adjust it until the final estimate is obtained. This can be seen in Questions 12 and 13:

Question 12

Only look at the following multiplication for about 5 seconds and give an estimate of the result. (That is, don’t spend time doing the full calculation).

Version A

1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 =

Version B

8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 =

Question 13

Version A

Are there fewer than 100 African countries in the United Nations? If you think there are, what is your estimate of the actual number?

Version B

Are there more than 3 African countries in the United Nations? If you think there are, what is your estimate of the actual number?

Question

How might people respond differently to the same question in the two versions? Make a prediction for each question before opening the data.

The correct answer to Question 12 is 40320. Typically, answers to Version A will be smaller than answers to Version B.

The correct answer to Question 13 is 51. Typically, answers to Version B will be smaller than answers to Version A.

The same thing is actually being asked in both versions of each question. However, anchoring and adjustment occurs based upon the ordering of the numbers in Question 12 and the initial query in Question 13, which results in systematically different answers. Another way to think about this is that the framing effect can occur as a result of influencing the initial anchoring value.

Brainstorm

What might be some real-world applications that take advantage of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic?