Anchoring Effect
We rely too heavily on the first piece of information we receive.
Anchoring (also known as focalism) is a cognitive bias where an individual depends too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (considered to be the 'anchor') to make subsequent judgments during decision-making. Once the value of this anchor is set, all future negotiations, estimates, or information are considered in relation to it. In negotiations, the first number stated tends to anchor the entire discussion regardless of its accuracy.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Marketing Original Price Display Showing a crossed-out $199 price next to the current $89 price anchors customers to the $199 reference point.
- Everyday life Salary Negotiation The first salary number stated in a negotiation anchors the final outcome — whoever names a number first gains leverage.
Someone has already built a business on this.
Biases are not only private errors. They are design targets — patterns deliberately engineered into interfaces because they reliably work.
- E-commerce Fake MSRP Anchoring Sites inflate the 'original' price shown as struck through to make the current price appear as a larger discount than it actually is.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
After seeing a house with an extremely high price per square foot, a buyer perceives other houses in the area as bargains, even though they are priced at or above market rate, because the premium anchor shifts their perception of what constitutes fair pricing for the neighborhood.
When buying a used car, the seller's initial asking price of fifteen thousand dollars makes an eight thousand dollar offer feel like a lowball even though the car is worth seven thousand.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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