Metacognitive Account of Anchoring Heuristic (Keith Dowd)

Similarity of Self-Generated and Experiment-Provided Anchors Predicts Adjustment: A Metacognitive Perspective of the Anchoring Heuristic Keith W. Dowd John V. Petrocelli Wake Forest University Wake Forest University ABSTRACT The present research examined the hypotheses that self-generated anchors (SGAs) and a metacognitive similarity factor influence the amount of adjustment from experiment-provided anchors (EPAs). In the present study, participants were asked to respond to a series of trivia questions with no immediately discernible solutions. Some participants were required to express their initial estimates (SGAs) before exposure to values supplied by the experimenter (EPAs). It was hypothesized that greater similarity between participants’ SGAs and the EPAs would lead to less adjustment evidenced by the differences between the EPAs and participants’ final estimates. In addition, it was hypothesized that SGAs play an important role when estimating unknown quantities and that people are consciously aware of their SGAs, regardless of whether they are explicitly instructed to report them. Some preliminary support was found for both of these hypotheses, suggesting that SGAs and EPA-SGA similarity play important roles in the cognitive processes underlying the anchoring heuristic. ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],Figure 1 Predicted means of adjustment from EPA in final estimates regressed onto EPA-SGA similarity and EPA (high or low). INTRODUCTION Anchoring-and-adjustment refers to a cognitive heuristic used in the estimation process whereby people attempt to adjust their estimation from an accessible starting value until an acceptable estimate is reached; often their adjustment is insufficient (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Previous research (Jacowitz & Kahneman, 1995) has demonstrated the anchoring heuristic to be robust in and outside of the laboratory and has implicated it as one explanation for numerical judgments and estimates of future performance. Despite numerous studies chronicling its effect, little research has explored the nature of the cognitive processes underlying its operation. Theoretical and Conceptual Framework Epley & Gilovich (2007) suggested that some types of anchors (i.e., SGAs) activate processes of anchoring-and-adjustment whereas others do not (EPAs). They argued that semantic priming is occurring in the case of EPAs rather than anchoring-and-adjustment. We propose that adjustment does occur with EPAs but that it does so in conjunction with SGAs and is driven by a metacognitive similarity factor between these two types of anchors. Because people also have the ability to think more deeply about their initial thoughts, we suggest that a metacognitive view (Jost, Kruglanski, & Nelson, 1998) of anchoring-and-adjustment may be fruitful to our understanding of its operation. Goal To determine the role of SGAs and test the hypothesis that SGA-EPA similarity moderates the degree of adjustment in participants’ final estimates from SGAs after being exposed to the EPAs. ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],DISCUSSION Partial support was found for our metacognitive process account of the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic; that is, for several of the anchoring items, high EPA-SGA similarity was associated with less adjustment away from the EPA, whereas low EPA-SGA similarity was associated with greater adjustments away from EPA. However, some of the anchoring items revealed no main effect for similarity or an interaction between EPA and similarity, and when it did, it was sometimes in the wrong direction. One explanation for these unsupportive results is that participants may not have correctly perceived the EPA as being high or low. Stronger findings could possibly be obtained if the EPAs were more representative of what participants considered high and low anchors for each anchoring item. In addition, our data also speaks to the spontaneity of SGAs. That is, these estimates were generated by participants regardless of whether or not they were instructed to explicitly report them, which suggests that they play an important role in the operation of the anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic because they provide a standard of comparison to contrast against EPAs. These findings imply that anchoring-and-adjustment is a conscious process that involves people actively thinking about information they both self-generate (e.g., SGAs) and receive from the situation (e.g., EPAs). Finally, these data build on the findings of Epley & Gilovich (2007) by providing further evidence for the importance of SGAs for the anchoring heuristic while also offering a preliminary process account for its operation. U N I V E R S I T Y WAKE FOREST SGA FE EPA CA Conditions 1 & 2 SGA FE EPA CA Conditions 3 & 4 SGA FE EPA CA Conditions 5 & 6 Freezing Point of Vodka Babies Born in the US Gestation Period of Elephant Length of Mississippi River European Explorer After Columbus Speed of House Cat

Metacognitive Account of Anchoring Heuristic (Keith Dowd)

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