Explaining the Enigmatic Anchoring Effect: Mechanisms of Selective Accessibility

Results of 3 studies support the notion that anchoring is a special case of semantic priming; specifically, information that is activated to solve a comparative anchoring task will subsequently be more accessible when participants make absolute judgments. By using the logic of priming research, in Study 1 the authors showed that the strength of the anchor effect depends on the applicability of activated information. Study 2 revealed a contrast effect when the activated information was not representative for the absolute judgment and the targets of the 2 judgment tasks were sufficiently different. Study 3 demonstrated that generating absolute judgments requires more time when comparative judgments include an implausible anchor and can therefore be made without relevant target information that would otherwise be accessible.

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