Title: Explaining the enigmatic anchoring effect: Mechanisms of selective accessibility.
Abstract: 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.
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 860
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