The danger of anchoring

I’m in the middle of a great book: The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.  It is a wicked good read.

It discusses two Israeli psychologists who dove into how people make decisions. The book is unnerving – it describes how we unwittingly fool ourselves into making bad choices.

The researchers touched upon anchoring. What is it? Your decisions can be adversely affected by placing too much emphasis or importance on the first piece of data you receive. That data “anchors” your mind in one area, leading it to dismiss or diminish subsequent information.

Don’t believe it? The researchers did an experiment that you can repeat.

 

continue reading »