Anchoring and Adjustment is a ubiquitous heuristic process in judgment and decision making. Although there is clear evidence that the anchor biases final estimates, there is disagreement about the process individuals use to arrive at the final estimate. The competing works observe the final estimates of the individuals under different conditions to find support for one or the other theory. I posit that the best way to study the mechanism in which the response is influenced is to observe the process by which participants come to the final response. In this vein, my work provides methodologies to surreptitiously observe individuals selecting the final response. My observations step towards providing a more nuanced process underlying the anchoring phenomenon. I posit that process of selecting a response by the individuals after getting influenced by the anchor is like searching for a response in the number space.
I further propose that this search will be biased in systematic ways. First bias is due to the individuals’ tendency to search for a response more intensively in ‘the adjacent possible’ or the areas of search nearby the current area they are searching. I show that the search for the response is thus, dominated by adjustments to adjacent possible responses indicating a search process constrained by selective accessibility. This search will require adjustment but will be impacted by selective accessibility of the information rendered accessible by the initial anchor.
Second bias is due the characteristics of the numerical search space itself. I suggest that the mental representation of numbers, just like mental representation of physical space, will have landmarks. I call them numerical landmarks. I propose that the presence of these numerical landmarks influences the individuals’ search of a response after they are influenced by an anchor. Essentially, I want to show that numerical anchors will share the characteristics of the mental representation of physical landmarks and will bias the search of an answer in the numerical space. With the help of five studies I propose to show the impact of numerical anchors on anchoring and adjustment bias and show that 1) Numerical landmarks, when presented on a scale, will grab more attention, 2) numerical landmarks are perceived to be bigger and more distinct than they actually are, and, 3) numerical landmarks act as decision nodes.
Additionally, the use of relatively low-order-cognition anchoring contexts (e.g., perceptual anchoring) adds to the literature by demonstrating anchoring and adjustment bias in non-numeric domains.