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Concept

Anchoring effect

The first number has an unfair talent for becoming the centre of the conversation.

When it fits

  • Use it when a price, target, score, deadline, or AI estimate appeared before the final judgment.

When to avoid it

  • A first number can be genuinely informative. Seeing it first does not make it a bad anchor or prove that anchoring occurred.

The idea

Anchoring is the pull of a starting number on a later estimate. The number may be useful evidence, or it may be little more than a suggestion wearing a suit. The question is whether it earned the weight your final estimate gives it.

An example

A sponsor says a project should take ten days. The team later estimates eleven, although comparable work usually takes three weeks. Ten may be relevant, but it should not become the baseline without evidence.

Check your result

Remove the starting number from your reasoning. What evidence still supports the final estimate, and what would you estimate from comparable cases or a separate method?

Keep this limit in mind

  • A first number can be genuinely informative. Seeing it first does not make it a bad anchor or prove that anchoring occurred.
  • Do not use a bias label to diagnose or discredit a person.

Connected ideas

Compare with
Framing effect

Evidence and sources

Supports

Numerical anchoring research examines how a comparison with a starting number can influence a later judgment; reported effects vary across conditions.

Supports the existence and condition dependence of anchoring effects; does not validate the corpus procedure.

Fifty Years of Anchoring Effects: A Theoretical Reintegration and Meta-Analysis · Publisher abstract and article summary

All sources (1)