Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stup
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: I've got a trivia question for you. All right, hittany,
Speaker 1: this is for all of you out there listening as well.
Speaker 1: When Marie Curie died, was she older or younger than
Speaker 1: twenty seven years old? Think about your answer, older or
Speaker 1: younger than seven? Okay, well, I have to say she
Speaker 1: was definitely older. But I have to admit that I
Speaker 1: read an excellent glow in the dark book about her
Speaker 1: a few years back, titled Radioactive Marie and Pierre Curie,
Speaker 1: A Tale of Love and Fallout, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: heading into Valentine's Day, it's an excellent Valentine's Day book
Speaker 1: to give somebody. Wait, hold on, so this is going
Speaker 1: to be about them, but it's glow in the dark
Speaker 1: signaling that the book is radio active and will poison
Speaker 1: you and your fingers will fall off. And well, when
Speaker 1: you put it like that, it doesn't sound very romantic,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a it's a very romantic book. But
Speaker 1: I know I know from having read that that she
Speaker 1: she would live significantly longer than than her twenties. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so most people probably do know that. But here here's
Speaker 1: another chance. Just guess what age she died. How old
Speaker 1: was Marie Curry when she died? And just think about it.
Speaker 1: This becomes a little harder for me because I have
Speaker 1: I can clearly picture a photograph of her. I'm gonna say,
Speaker 1: very close. Marie Cury died in nineteen thirty four at
Speaker 1: the age of sixty six, So yeah, very close. Now
Speaker 1: you listening at home, how close were you? Did you overshoot?
Speaker 1: I assume not many people undershot the age. If you did,
Speaker 1: that's okay, no shame in it. I tried this on
Speaker 1: somebody yesterday and she guessed forty four. I did the
Speaker 1: same thing. I said, older, younger than seven? What's the age?
Speaker 1: And when when I told her the answer that it
Speaker 1: was actually sixty six, the person I was talking to said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of her that looked older than that,
Speaker 1: but I guess I assumed it was from all the radiation. Okay,
Speaker 1: I see where you're going with this. Though, the the
Speaker 1: question you asked by putting twenty seven in there, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're sort of lowering their expectations. It could be, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe something's going on there. I've got another one for you.
Speaker 1: When Sean Connery took a role in the film Highlander
Speaker 1: to the Quickening one of his finest choices, Yes, the
Speaker 1: planet's eist. When he took that role, what was his
Speaker 1: salary for the role? Was it more or less than
Speaker 1: thirty one million dollars? Okay, this one's tough for me
Speaker 1: because I love movie trivia, but I'm not very good
Speaker 1: with the economic movie trivia, so I don't even have
Speaker 1: a very good starting point. It seems to me, though,
Speaker 1: that sounds like an awful lot of money. Um, especially
Speaker 1: for Highlander two. Yeah, Like that's that's some that's some
Speaker 1: big Uh. That's that's some Tom Cruise money right there,
Speaker 1: I would guess. So you're saying lower maybe, But then
Speaker 1: this was you have to put yourself in a pre
Speaker 1: Highland or two era, So Highlander two can't imagine it,
Speaker 1: unable to process, cannot compute. It's It's true. I don't
Speaker 1: think I watched Highlander. I got excited to watch Highlander
Speaker 1: one after I saw trailers for Highlander two. I believe
Speaker 1: that's how that went down. But yeah, not not knowing
Speaker 1: what we know now about the the the public reception,
Speaker 1: uh to to Highlander two, one could easily say, yeah
Speaker 1: it was everyone was just totally optimistic. It was a
Speaker 1: follow up to Highlander, which was arguably, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the greatest films of its generation. Okay, so guess
Speaker 1: taking out what was his actual salary? All right, you're
Speaker 1: asking about thirty five one I'm going to have that
Speaker 1: and say fifteen million? Is that a lot for Sean Connery? Oh?
Speaker 1: Your way over the mark. Now, I do have to
Speaker 1: admit that my answer comes from a sketchy looking website,
Speaker 1: which is the only place I could find an answer
Speaker 1: called like the movie time. So maybe this is wrong,
Speaker 1: but the answer I could find said he was paid
Speaker 1: three point five million. Okay, well, yeah I was way
Speaker 1: over the line. Then yeah, but worth every penny really
Speaker 1: and then some exactly right. But notice how far off
Speaker 1: the mark you were given those starting questions. I asked,
Speaker 1: was she older, younger than twenty seven? Or was it
Speaker 1: more or less than thirty one million? And I wonder
Speaker 1: to what extent those questions changed the kind of answer
Speaker 1: you gave to your ultimate guests on her age at
Speaker 1: death or on the movie salary? What would you have
Speaker 1: said if you hadn't received those questions to start with? Well,
Speaker 1: in the case of the Highlander question, I was just
Speaker 1: kind of trying to reverse engineer and answer. I think
Speaker 1: I would have I still would have missed the mark,
Speaker 1: but I think I would have probably said something like
Speaker 1: five or six million, a lot closer, A lot closer,
Speaker 1: certainly less of an exaggeration, but the but but but
Speaker 1: you were pretty much on the money on Murray Curry, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, but but that was an area where I
Speaker 1: I have read about her and I think I did
Speaker 1: a podcast that talked about her a while back, so
Speaker 1: I had some sort of I had some level of
Speaker 1: expert information there, but I had nothing really to go
Speaker 1: on for the Highland or two one. Okay. So this
Speaker 1: effect that we've just been demonstrating is what we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about today. And this is a psychological effect.
Speaker 1: It's been written about a lot in the field of
Speaker 1: behavioral economics, but it's fundamentally a psychological phenomenon known as
Speaker 1: the anchoring bias, and I would argue it's one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful, most well known, and most easily exploited
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities in our minds, and for that reason, I think
Speaker 1: it's something that really everybody should know about, because it's
Speaker 1: something that people will constantly be using to try to
Speaker 1: get the per hand on you for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. Indeed, this is definitely a topic that will
Speaker 1: change the way you think about everything from salary negotiations
Speaker 1: to just haggling at the market totally. Yeah. Uh, and
Speaker 1: not just economic matters too, I want to uh, though
Speaker 1: it's mostly been tested in terms of estimating numbers, and
Speaker 1: especially economic type numbers, prices, things where you're trying to
Speaker 1: determine a reasonable figure for something. I would posit that
Speaker 1: I think it's very likely this type of thinking also
Speaker 1: biases all kinds of judgments we make, such as judgments
Speaker 1: of people's reputations, judgments of the confidence we place in
Speaker 1: the outcomes of events, all of which is going to
Speaker 1: be enormously important for the rest of your life in
Speaker 1: myriad ways. Yeah. Though certainly a lot of the more
Speaker 1: like readily available examples are gonna involve economics. They're gonna
Speaker 1: involve things like massive discounts. How can you do you
Speaker 1: remember deep discount vds? Deep discount DVDs or I guess
Speaker 1: it was deep discount DVD. I think it was a
Speaker 1: website that had it's time in the sun there with
Speaker 1: with deeply discounted DVDs. And it seems like everybody I
Speaker 1: knew we were just like, oh my goodness, these deals
Speaker 1: are too good. You're practically you're losing money if you
Speaker 1: don't order these movies. Right. The more you buy, the
Speaker 1: more you save. And it's easy to fall into that mentality.
Speaker 1: It's like I didn't really want to pick up this
Speaker 1: video game or this movie or this book, but when
Speaker 1: you slice the price that much, I guess I'll bite. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: seems irrational, right. But back to the questions I asked earlier,
Speaker 1: what what age did Marie Curry die? How much was
Speaker 1: Sean Connery paid for Highlander two? I actually did a brief,
Speaker 1: non scientific email survey. I say non scientific because these
Speaker 1: were very small samples, not truly random. I just basically
Speaker 1: randomly emailed coworkers UH in two different groups and asked
Speaker 1: them to estimate answers to those questions. Now, I had
Speaker 1: Group A where I just asked them how old did
Speaker 1: you think Marie Curry was when she died? And how
Speaker 1: much do you think Sean Connery got paid for highland
Speaker 1: Er two? No anchors, right, no starting numbers higher or
Speaker 1: lower than And in that group, the average answer that
Speaker 1: people gave was that they thought that Marie Cury died
Speaker 1: at fifty three, and they thought that Sean Connery got
Speaker 1: paid three point two million. Three point that was there.
Speaker 1: That was their answer, without any anchoring, right, without any anchoring.
Speaker 1: So that's very close, very close to the three point
Speaker 1: five if that website is correct. Who knows? Then Group B,
Speaker 1: I did the same anchors I just gave you. So
Speaker 1: I asked them, did she die older? Younger than twenty seven?
Speaker 1: What age did she die? The average answer for that
Speaker 1: group was forty eight point three good bit lower than yeah.
Speaker 1: And then also I did the same thing, I said, uh,
Speaker 1: higher or lower than thirty one million for Sean Connery.
Speaker 1: Average guests in Group B was that Sean Connery got
Speaker 1: paid nineteen point three million dollars uncle that I wasn't
Speaker 1: alone to be for Islander to nineteen point three million.
Speaker 1: And these are these are co workers, These are smart people,
Speaker 1: you know, they should be good at making estimates of
Speaker 1: these kind of things off the top of their head.
Speaker 1: But in this non scientific way, I feel like we've
Speaker 1: just demonstrated that just putting a number out there, even
Speaker 1: if the number is totally unreasonable, and Mary cuy didn't
Speaker 1: die at twenty seven, what Sean Connery did not get
Speaker 1: thirty one million for this movie in that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. But even if you put these unreasonable numbers
Speaker 1: out there, they seem to bias people's answers toward the
Speaker 1: numbers you've thrown out. Well, it really takes me back
Speaker 1: to like pop quizzes in grade school tests, right, and
Speaker 1: the saying the famous adage the answer is in the question,
Speaker 1: Because what do you do if you don't really know
Speaker 1: the answer? Will you have? It's multiple choice? You look
Speaker 1: at the available answers and answers and see which one
Speaker 1: each is out to you the most, which one feels
Speaker 1: true or stirs your memory? And then failing that, you
Speaker 1: look to the question itself. Is there some sort of
Speaker 1: information in the question? Uh? Essentially you're looking for like
Speaker 1: a leak in the question. You're looking for a flaw
Speaker 1: in the in the Riddler's strategy. Yeah, there's test taking skills,
Speaker 1: which are essentially meta test taking skills. They are skills
Speaker 1: that are not really about the subject of the test,
Speaker 1: but skills at determining how to interrogate the style and
Speaker 1: format of a test to exploit it for better scores
Speaker 1: in the end. Right. But then I also think there's
Speaker 1: there's also kind of a social connotation to this as well.
Speaker 1: Like an example would be, you have a friend who
Speaker 1: comes up and says, hey, man, have you heard this
Speaker 1: latest album by I don't know name an active band
Speaker 1: Kansas Kansas. Have you heard this new album by Kansas?
Speaker 1: How awesome is that album? Man? So now I have
Speaker 1: to I have to frame my answer around awesome? Is
Speaker 1: it pretty awesome? Super awesome? It was okay, reasonably awesome.
Speaker 1: When you say it was okay, what that means is
Speaker 1: you hated it, But you have to adjust up to
Speaker 1: the fact that they started with how awesome is it? Right?
Speaker 1: And this is a case though, where it's it's not
Speaker 1: a situation where you're gonna appear stupid or or uninformed
Speaker 1: on a topic unless you know, except on the topic
Speaker 1: of Kansas. Maybe it's not a situation where you have
Speaker 1: any monetary steaks, but there is kind of like a
Speaker 1: social steak employ there. If your friend is a huge
Speaker 1: Kansas fan. You don't want to say, oh, I think
Speaker 1: Kansas is awful. You want to adjust your answer so
Speaker 1: that it's the appropriate balance of truth and uh in politeness. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: in the same way that my email survey was not
Speaker 1: really scientific, what we're talking about. These examples are not
Speaker 1: really scientific either. They're just anecdotes, and they've got all
Speaker 1: these contaminating factors like you're saying Kansas, well, like social
Speaker 1: social dynamics, like you were just explaining, so you respond,
Speaker 1: it might not be truly influenced by just the presence
Speaker 1: of the word awesome as much as it is by
Speaker 1: the fact that you're trying to maintain a relationship with
Speaker 1: the person who said this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So it's not divorced of this contaminating context. Now, the
Speaker 1: anchoring effect that we're going to be talking about today
Speaker 1: has been thoroughly demonstrated in fully scientific context, So it's
Speaker 1: not always just this social kind of stuff going on. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can test it ten ways to Sunday, and it
Speaker 1: has been tested not just ten a million ways to Sunday,
Speaker 1: and this thing works. This anchoring effect is a known
Speaker 1: robust exploit of the human mind that works almost all
Speaker 1: the time it is. It is scary how often it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are no shortage of papers about this. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. Now, I guess we should try to define
Speaker 1: it just a little bit more so to define the
Speaker 1: anchoring effect. It is an example of what's known as
Speaker 1: a cognitive heuristic. And if you're like me, I can remember.
Speaker 1: I think back when I was in college, I went
Speaker 1: a long time hearing the word heuristic and just sort
Speaker 1: of nodding without really knowing what it meant. Anytime you
Speaker 1: hear the word heuristic, you can just substitute the phrase
Speaker 1: rule of thumb or mental shortcut. I still picture a
Speaker 1: hair shirt, no matter what I mean. Cans like that
Speaker 1: because you just kind of you ever have words like
Speaker 1: that where it's completely illogical, but you can't help but
Speaker 1: picture this thing in your head. I have no idea why,
Speaker 1: like I tend to imagine a philosopher in a hair shirt.
Speaker 1: Melissandra put on her rough spun heuristic pretty much. But
Speaker 1: in reality, a heuristic is a rule of thumb or
Speaker 1: a mental shortcut. It's essentially a fast and easy process
Speaker 1: that your brain uses to come up with some kind
Speaker 1: of output. You need a piece of information or a
Speaker 1: judgment about something, and you don't really have time to
Speaker 1: sit down and work out all the details, so instead
Speaker 1: you use a heuristic. And heuristics can lead to relatively
Speaker 1: good output. Sometimes you're good it at a fast and
Speaker 1: loose judgment on the fly, or they can lead to
Speaker 1: relatively bad output. And there are all kinds of heuristics
Speaker 1: we use. One example of an extremely common and extremely
Speaker 1: bad heuristic is judging some what you think of somebody
Speaker 1: by how they look. Extremely common heuristic. It's a shortcut.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do the work of like talking
Speaker 1: to them for hours and figuring out, you know, what
Speaker 1: you really think about them and their reliability as a
Speaker 1: person and their values and all that. So instead you
Speaker 1: can just look at them and make a crude judgment.
Speaker 1: This is a great example because it's also a process
Speaker 1: that is not necessarily taking place at the surface level
Speaker 1: of of cognition. It's implicit as opposed to explicit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it very often is. And so this is like one
Speaker 1: of these really bad heuristics that we're just plagued by. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's everybody should recognize it's a destructive way
Speaker 1: of thinking that it's not really good for society. That
Speaker 1: people do it, but people just keep doing it because
Speaker 1: they're naturally vulnerable to it. It's like taking a short
Speaker 1: cut through the woods. It makes sense unless there's a
Speaker 1: monster there, or it's rain or you get lost. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean really, that can be said about a lot
Speaker 1: of shortcuts. So when we call them shortcuts, they can
Speaker 1: help you help you out in the short term. But
Speaker 1: if everybody does it, it breaks the system, or if
Speaker 1: you do it too often, you're more likely to run
Speaker 1: up against the pitfalls of taking that shortcut. Another bad heuristic,
Speaker 1: of course, is the anchoring heuristic, the one we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. Uh. It might not be bad in every
Speaker 1: single case, because maybe in some off chance it will
Speaker 1: bias you toward a correct answer. But most of the time,
Speaker 1: the way the anchoring heuristic is going to be deployed
Speaker 1: in your life is by people who are trying to
Speaker 1: get you negotiated toward their position on something, and they
Speaker 1: will use the anchoring bias in order to exploit your
Speaker 1: mind and make you come closer to a position that
Speaker 1: benefits them. Right. So again, this is haggling for something
Speaker 1: at a marketplace. This is negotiations over a contract. After
Speaker 1: what have you exactly right, So I think we should
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and then when we come back
Speaker 1: we will discuss the origins of the idea of anchoring
Speaker 1: and some research in psychology and behavioral economics on how
Speaker 1: it applies. Thank alright, we're back. I should mention that
Speaker 1: one of our main resources in discussing the anchoring effect
Speaker 1: is a two thousand eleven literature review from the Journal
Speaker 1: of Socioeconomics by Adrian Fernham and Hua Cheu Boo, which
Speaker 1: collects and synthesizes all of the major research on the
Speaker 1: subject over the past forty years or so up until
Speaker 1: about two thousand eleven. This paper is a great resource.
Speaker 1: It puts it all in one place, and so that's
Speaker 1: going to be sort of our guide for discussing it
Speaker 1: as we go. One question is where does the idea
Speaker 1: of anchoring come from. Obviously people have been using it
Speaker 1: before it was understood and codified as a principle in
Speaker 1: behavioral economics, right, But the anchoring and adjustment effect was
Speaker 1: most influentially described and articulated by Tversky and Conomon in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, and according to them, it is quote
Speaker 1: the disproportionate influence on decision makers to make judgments that
Speaker 1: are biased toward and initially presented value. So what that means,
Speaker 1: in effect, is that when we're trying to make a
Speaker 1: reasonable guess or a judgment about something, any piece of
Speaker 1: information you get before you make the judgment is likely
Speaker 1: to bias your thinking in the direction of that piece
Speaker 1: of information. So, if you're shown a car and asked
Speaker 1: how much you would pay for it, you you might say, what,
Speaker 1: I don't know, ten thousand dollars. That seems about right.
Speaker 1: But let's say instead you are shown the same car
Speaker 1: with the price sticker on it that says sixteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: According to the anchoring and adjustment hypothesis here, you would
Speaker 1: be more likely in this scenario to offer more for
Speaker 1: the car, more than you would have if you just
Speaker 1: saw the car and tried to think, how much would
Speaker 1: that be worth to me? Because now, oh, now that
Speaker 1: it has a sixteen thousand dollar price tag, I think
Speaker 1: maybe it looks worth about twelve thousand. You're still coming
Speaker 1: down from the offer, but the offer has biased up
Speaker 1: your initial judgment of how much it's worth, or, in
Speaker 1: other words, the anchor of the initial price has adjusted
Speaker 1: your offer higher than you naturally be willing to pay
Speaker 1: if that price hadn't been presented to you. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like if you have a ticket for a concert
Speaker 1: and then you realize you can't go, and so you
Speaker 1: try to sell that ticket, just you know, online to
Speaker 1: some friends. Maybe you'll often include how much you paid
Speaker 1: for it and and what you're really saying there is
Speaker 1: I paid thirty bucks for this ticket, so I'll take
Speaker 1: whatever I can get. But either closer you get to
Speaker 1: thirty the better. You're not a Yeah, you're not asking
Speaker 1: how much is it worth for you to see Kansas.
Speaker 1: You're saying, given that I paid five hundred dollars for
Speaker 1: front row seats to Kansas, how close can you get
Speaker 1: to that that number. I have no idea how much
Speaker 1: Kansas tickets actually cost. I assume their mega and demand.
Speaker 1: But by simply mentioning five hundred dollars, you made me
Speaker 1: think about anything. Well, you know they're Kansas. I I
Speaker 1: know of Kansas, so they're a big enough name. Uh,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that someone would pay a lot of
Speaker 1: money for a first row experience. You know, we're dust
Speaker 1: in the wind, we only live once. You might as
Speaker 1: well go see Kansas, even if it costs a pretty penny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, Like you said, just how just through observation
Speaker 1: you can tell how powerful this this, the anchoring phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It actually is right, But we don't have to go
Speaker 1: anecdotal because this has been proved up down, left, right,
Speaker 1: sideways to Wichita and back. Uh. It is a thoroughly,
Speaker 1: thoroughly demonstrated principle. Our minds just work this way, and
Speaker 1: so there are some qualifications. The anchoring bias can be
Speaker 1: affected by some variables, we think, and there is actually
Speaker 1: debate over what explains the reason behind it, why it
Speaker 1: happens in different scenarios. But what there's really no debating
Speaker 1: is that it happens. This is This has proven a
Speaker 1: million ways, and it is. It is considered a thoroughly
Speaker 1: robust bias and a fundamental part of how the human
Speaker 1: brain works. Yes, as you said, it said there are
Speaker 1: no shortage of papers to back this up. I would
Speaker 1: say that one of the problems is that these are
Speaker 1: some of the stuffiest academic papers you could hope to read.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're breaking apart a phenomenous best studied
Speaker 1: through numbers and figures and estimates on value. So it's
Speaker 1: not as sexy as you have somebody in a room
Speaker 1: pulling a lever to shock somebody in the next room.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel like maybe maybe what anchoring needs
Speaker 1: is like one really good but kind of superficial study
Speaker 1: that's just based on saying, how much do you think
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise was paid for this film? Something that will
Speaker 1: get that will generate headlines that will be uh relatable
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way, and that could help explain
Speaker 1: anchoring more to the general public. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: popular sensational demons stration, but it's been demonsted. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of the problem is you don't need to demonstrate
Speaker 1: it anymore. It's been demonstrated with these like hundreds of questions.
Speaker 1: It's been demonstrated on right, what is the freezing point
Speaker 1: of vodka? That's one that they ask people. Uh makes
Speaker 1: a difference there. What is the height of Mount Everest? Uh?
Speaker 1: What age was Amelia Earhart when she disappeared attempting to
Speaker 1: pilot a plane around the world. So they're just all
Speaker 1: these studies that ask questions like this and use anchoring
Speaker 1: to bias the answers of participants. But it also works
Speaker 1: in things other than just like giving a basic informational
Speaker 1: guess about something. That's what we've been doing so far,
Speaker 1: Like you know, can you guess a fact about history?
Speaker 1: It also works in contexts like what percent chance would
Speaker 1: you give of a thing happening? What's the percent chance
Speaker 1: you would give of a certain athlete scoring a certain
Speaker 1: number of points in an upcoming game. So it influences
Speaker 1: our judgments of probabilities. Yes, we certainly see this in
Speaker 1: political elections, for instance, Absolutely numbers thrown out what are
Speaker 1: the chances of this particular candidate winning, and then you
Speaker 1: end up adjusting your expectations of the future based on
Speaker 1: those percentages. Yeah, and so those percentages could be based
Speaker 1: on something in reality. I mean, like if you're looking
Speaker 1: at good, well conducted poll data that's reflecting information about
Speaker 1: reality that you might want to adjust according to that, right,
Speaker 1: if it's good information. But somebody could also bias you
Speaker 1: with bad information, uh, just by using the anchoring effect.
Speaker 1: If they just put a ridiculous number that's not true
Speaker 1: in front of your face, chances are that this will
Speaker 1: actually influence the extent to which will influence your self
Speaker 1: synthesized probability judgment. Yeah, Like there's I say, there's a
Speaker 1: poll that comes out and says, of wizards think Voldemort,
Speaker 1: it will be a great ruler of the Earth, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, well, who, I don't know, is
Speaker 1: kind of high. It's probably more like sixty, right when
Speaker 1: when really most wizards, maybe of wizards think Baltimore is great.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I leave that to the the Potter fans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the percent is, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: could be anchored and biased that way. So it affects
Speaker 1: these probability estimates. I know one thing they tested it
Speaker 1: on was like likelihood estimates of nuclear war. You can
Speaker 1: bias people's answers with anchors there. It has been shown
Speaker 1: to influence legal judgments like sentencing and uh and liability
Speaker 1: for punitive damages. It's been shown to influence this is
Speaker 1: a huge one, valuations and prices, right, how much you'd
Speaker 1: be willing to pay for something. That's a really common example. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would be it's been used in in forecasting examples
Speaker 1: like how much you would expect to spend on a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And here's a really weird thing. The types of anchors
Speaker 1: that influence people don't have to seem credible. People can
Speaker 1: be influenced. These studies have shown by things that obviously
Speaker 1: shouldn't be influences. They don't have to like frame this, uh,
Speaker 1: this anchoring number that they prime you with as coming
Speaker 1: from some reasonable authority or something like that. They can
Speaker 1: just prime you with a random number that doesn't matter
Speaker 1: at all. Some studies have people spinning a wheel to
Speaker 1: get a random number, and the random number still biases
Speaker 1: your answer toward it. So just a random approval rating
Speaker 1: for Boltimore, I could say, even though it's super high
Speaker 1: approval rating among wizards of Baltimore. Apparently you could spin
Speaker 1: a wheel in front of people so that it's entirely
Speaker 1: clear to them that the number is random and you're
Speaker 1: it's not coming from real data, and still showing that
Speaker 1: higher number from the random spin of the wheel would
Speaker 1: bias people's estimates towards the number. But we're getting ahead
Speaker 1: of ourselves, because I think we should take a moment
Speaker 1: to talk about the different theories about what explained means
Speaker 1: the anchoring effect. Obviously, this thing's there. If you put
Speaker 1: a number in front of somebody's face, it's going to
Speaker 1: bias their estimate or their answer towards that number. But
Speaker 1: why does this happen now we mentioned the idea was
Speaker 1: very popularly explained by Knomon and Diverseki in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and their original proposal of adjustment was was going up
Speaker 1: or down from a given anchor. And so their idea
Speaker 1: was you start with the anchor when you're trying to
Speaker 1: reason out the answer to something. So I say, you know,
Speaker 1: what was Sean Connery's salary in uh in Highland or two?
Speaker 1: Was it thirty one million or or above or below?
Speaker 1: The way people reason about that is they'd start with
Speaker 1: thirty one million, and they'd say is that reasonable? And
Speaker 1: then most people would say, no, it can't be that much.
Speaker 1: So then they'd work their way down from thirty one
Speaker 1: million to a place that starts to feel reasonable. And
Speaker 1: so in that sense, you're sort of biasing yourself up
Speaker 1: towards like the the utter top range of whatever you
Speaker 1: might consider a reasonable range of answers. Does that make sense? Yes, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: But this explanation does have problems. People have attacked it
Speaker 1: in the literature because anchoring, for one thing, is often
Speaker 1: shown to be unconscious. So if you're not doing this consciously,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to explain how that whole process
Speaker 1: could work itself out. Now that's not to say that
Speaker 1: it's it's not ever conscious, because clearly, if someone's going
Speaker 1: into negotiations of a price, you might go into it
Speaker 1: saying I paid thirty dollars for this ticket. If I
Speaker 1: could get forty, that would be great. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start at forty knowing that they'll work me down closer
Speaker 1: to what I actually expect to get. Yeah, you're totally right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it clearly is conscious, And in those conscious scenarios,
Speaker 1: I think Conomon in Tversky's explanation might be right on
Speaker 1: the money. But uh, it also in some cases is
Speaker 1: clearly unconscious. And also it affects judgment whether or not
Speaker 1: the anchor is anywhere close to the realm of a
Speaker 1: reasonable range. So if I said, um, uh Sean Connery's
Speaker 1: was was Sean Connery's salary in Highlander to the quickening,
Speaker 1: uh eight million dollars? Or if I said, was it
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars? Either way, that kind of thing has
Speaker 1: been shown to influence to bias your answer toward it.
Speaker 1: So whether it's within a somewhat reasonable range or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you throw it throughout one of those Uh,
Speaker 1: those figures, I'm thinking it's either exceedingly high or it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty small for Sean Connery. Like if you, if
Speaker 1: you'd if you'd asked me, did Sean Connery receive less
Speaker 1: or more than a hundred dollars for his role in
Speaker 1: in Highland or two? That would make me begin to think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he was paid of an exceedingly small amount of
Speaker 1: money and it was there was some sort of special
Speaker 1: studio deal about it, or he just did it for
Speaker 1: the love of the franchise. Yeah, he just wanted to
Speaker 1: support Highlander. He said, I'll to just take fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: that's all I need. Uh Yeah, that would still bias
Speaker 1: you way down from the true answer. Now, a different
Speaker 1: hypothesis for explaining what causes the anchoring effect is something
Speaker 1: that we're all very familiar with. It's often called the
Speaker 1: selective accessibility hypothesis, but really this is just explaining the
Speaker 1: anchoring effect through confirmatory hypothesis testing a k A. Confirmation bias.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is a big one. This is like
Speaker 1: the bugbear of scientific study or just critical thinking exactly.
Speaker 1: So in this in this format, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: find the answer to a question, you mainly seek reasons
Speaker 1: to justify belief in the answer you already suspect. So
Speaker 1: if a detective is trying to solve a murder and
Speaker 1: he's got a gut feeling that Eugene did it, he's
Speaker 1: going to unconsciously give greater weight to any piece of
Speaker 1: evidence that makes Eugene look more guilty, and unconsciously ignore
Speaker 1: or give less weight to evidence that points to somebody
Speaker 1: else or exonerates Eugene. So instead of openly and inductively
Speaker 1: just gathering evidence for all possibilities, he's subconsciously, without realizing it,
Speaker 1: trying to build a case for the suspect he already
Speaker 1: hypothesizes to be guilty. Uh. Confirmation bias. Another way of
Speaker 1: explaining it is that a lot of times when we
Speaker 1: think we're working like an investigator, we're really working like
Speaker 1: a prosecutor. Right. Uh. An example that's come up recently
Speaker 1: on the podcast is is that of scientific studies into
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of prayer, right, because it's you can see
Speaker 1: how it's easy for an individual to go into this
Speaker 1: thinking that they are being completely objective, but if they
Speaker 1: if part of their worldview, even if it's not, even
Speaker 1: if they're not just like a hardcore believer. Now, if
Speaker 1: it's a part of their past, if it's a part
Speaker 1: of their history, Uh, then that could be a stumbling
Speaker 1: block to like true objective exploration of prayer as having
Speaker 1: some sort of an influence on the real world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course we we would. We should say that
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean things like prayer studies are do because
Speaker 1: you can certainly design I mean, this is what science
Speaker 1: is for. This is why you design experiments. You try
Speaker 1: to make them so that your your biases don't matter.
Speaker 1: You structure an experiment to try to exclude the possibility
Speaker 1: of your bias interfering with the results. But I think
Speaker 1: that the other takeaway here is that there are there
Speaker 1: are two types of bad prayer researchers. Essentially, there's the
Speaker 1: researcher who is just objectively bad, that is saying, I
Speaker 1: believe prayer is real and I'm going to I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bend and break every rule to quote unquote prove it
Speaker 1: in the study. And I think though that sort of
Speaker 1: researcher tends to not exist. But then there's the second level,
Speaker 1: and that's the individual who if you ask them about it,
Speaker 1: if you were able to peer into their mind. They
Speaker 1: believe they are doing the objective thing. They honestly think
Speaker 1: they're doing a good job, probably, but they are still
Speaker 1: leaning into their bias. Yeah, they're prosecuting the truth rather
Speaker 1: than than investigating all open possibilities. Uh. Yeah. But then again,
Speaker 1: like I said, I don't want to automatically tar anybody
Speaker 1: who does a prayer study with that, but that clearly
Speaker 1: is probably happening in some cases. Yeah. But the prosecution
Speaker 1: example is great too because it brings up the idea
Speaker 1: of leading questions, and the anchoring seems to indicate that
Speaker 1: any question with a with a figure in it, with
Speaker 1: with some sort of a number in it is kind
Speaker 1: of a leading question if I'm giving you a starting
Speaker 1: point for you to determine the value. Yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: mean that that is, you could say that leading questions
Speaker 1: are something similar to the anchoring effect. You're trying to
Speaker 1: give people a place to work from in the content
Speaker 1: of the question. Now there's a third explanation for how
Speaker 1: the anchoring effect works. Apart from the anchoring an adjustment
Speaker 1: theory of Konomon and Tversky, and apart from the confirmation
Speaker 1: bias or selective accessibility model and The third one is
Speaker 1: often known as the attitude change model, and this uh
Speaker 1: to think about the simple version of this. Essentially, in
Speaker 1: the attitude change model, the anchor is treated as something
Speaker 1: that changes your attitude towards the nature of the question.
Speaker 1: In other words, the anchor is treated as a kind
Speaker 1: of hint. Now, a lot of people might have reacted
Speaker 1: to the stuff I said at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: episode that way, like, oh, if you said, um, you know,
Speaker 1: did Marie Cury live till after? She probably lived more
Speaker 1: than that. But I bet that is like a cue
Speaker 1: or a hint that she died young. Does that make sense? No,
Speaker 1: I think that makes perfect sense. I think that is.
Speaker 1: That is the way I tend to think about trivia
Speaker 1: questions if one's pulling out some trivia cards just you know,
Speaker 1: with friends or family. Like one example, there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: little card game called are You Smarter Than a Box
Speaker 1: of Rocks? And it's each trivia question the answer is
Speaker 1: going to be zero, one or two, and you shake
Speaker 1: a box of rocks, and the answers will will be
Speaker 1: based on the random way that the rocks of fall
Speaker 1: together a zero one or two, so that you're playing
Speaker 1: against a box of rocks. But you go into every
Speaker 1: question knowing that the answer is going to be low.
Speaker 1: It cannot be greater than two, right, So in that case,
Speaker 1: you are being primed with an anchor each time you
Speaker 1: play with something that is informationally relevant, like it actually
Speaker 1: is that that is useful information that's going to buy
Speaker 1: us your answer toward correct answers. But in the case
Speaker 1: of anchoring, there is plenty of evidence that you can
Speaker 1: bias people's answers towards incorrect answers. Obviously incorrect answers answers
Speaker 1: they would never give unless they've been given this anchor
Speaker 1: before making the judgment. You know. Another area I think
Speaker 1: we were one running runs into this a lot, uh
Speaker 1: is the area of star ratings for things. You know,
Speaker 1: if you see a five star rating for a particular service, podcast, movie, book, game,
Speaker 1: you name it, uh, that is going to serve as
Speaker 1: an as an anchoring point for your evaluation of the
Speaker 1: product or one star. Yeah, well I think that they're
Speaker 1: they're clearly is for example, a critical hurting effect about
Speaker 1: if you look at the way critics opinions pour in
Speaker 1: for movies and video games and things like that, especially
Speaker 1: any system maybe less so for things like books where
Speaker 1: there's not as much of an organized numerical rating system
Speaker 1: that people use. But yeah, for like movies, the Rotten
Speaker 1: Tomatoes score or whatever. I do really get the feeling
Speaker 1: that once you've seen that lots of other critics like something,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to give it a fair shake. Like
Speaker 1: you might just pay more attention when you're watching it
Speaker 1: and think, Okay, this is something interesting going on here.
Speaker 1: You might have watched the same movie otherwise and just
Speaker 1: kind of been checking your phone and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was okay. Yeah, And it kind of opens your
Speaker 1: mind to the possibility for wonder um in something which
Speaker 1: it in something that is his low stakes this film
Speaker 1: for most of us, you know, unless you're a perfec
Speaker 1: national um in the in the industry for the most part,
Speaker 1: Like that's a good thing. Why I'm all for finding
Speaker 1: the wonder in a terrible film. Uh, But when you
Speaker 1: apply that to other areas, to find the wonder in
Speaker 1: a terrible automobile, to find the wonder in a terrible
Speaker 1: political candidate like that, the stakes are higher. I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a real devotee of cult b cars. We need
Speaker 1: like a mystery science theater of household appliances. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: the silhouettes are all missing fingers in that in that example. Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess we should move on to and we're still
Speaker 1: working mainly from that two thousand eleven paper I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Uh to mention a few of the factors that have
Speaker 1: been found to affect or influence the anchoring effect, one
Speaker 1: of which is mood. I thought this was kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because it actually runs counter to some of the
Speaker 1: ways that mood affects other types of judgment. Here's how
Speaker 1: it goes. Being sad has been found to generally make
Speaker 1: you more susceptible to anchoring. This is odd because the
Speaker 1: general understanding is that people reason better when they're in
Speaker 1: a sad mood than when they're in a happy mood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the idea you want your shoppers happy, right,
Speaker 1: Like a happy shopper is gonna enter and leave with
Speaker 1: a smile on their face. But this makes it sound
Speaker 1: like the opposite that you want sad shoppers. Yeah. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that information is generally processed more efficiently when
Speaker 1: judges are in a sad mood. Uh, This it's the
Speaker 1: opposite for the anchoring effect. To quote from the paper
Speaker 1: I mentioned the two eleven paper quote. However, an exception
Speaker 1: to this rule is judgmental anchoring. Bowdenhausen and Englick and
Speaker 1: Soda found that participants in a sad mood were more
Speaker 1: susceptible to the heuristic bias of anchoring in comparison to
Speaker 1: their counterparts in a neutral or happy mood. From the
Speaker 1: attitude change perspective, sad mood causes people to engage in
Speaker 1: more effortful processing, where people interpret information through elaboration on
Speaker 1: their existing knowledge and determine the claim to be acceptable
Speaker 1: or unacceptable. So maybe the idea here is that people
Speaker 1: in a sad mood are more likely to spend more
Speaker 1: time reading into the question on anchoring, doing that attitude
Speaker 1: change thing, looking for a hint in the question, and
Speaker 1: this hint can bias them way off the mark. Okay,
Speaker 1: well what about the knowledge of the participants? This comes
Speaker 1: back to the to your initial question. Like I, I
Speaker 1: had read this book right, had researched this topic before,
Speaker 1: so I felt like I had a leg up on
Speaker 1: the question. Yeah, if you've just been reading about Marie
Speaker 1: Curry's life, you probably knew the right answer, and that
Speaker 1: anchor wasn't going to throw you right. So there are
Speaker 1: some cases where obviously knowledge can play a difference, but
Speaker 1: in general, knowledge of a subject area has not been
Speaker 1: shown to be a strong way of undercutting the anchoring effect.
Speaker 1: Even if you're knowledgeable in a subject area, you're still
Speaker 1: susceptible all to anchoring. Examples that have been tested here
Speaker 1: are that, for example, car mechanics and car dealers were
Speaker 1: influenced by anchors on car prices. Estate agents adjust to
Speaker 1: their estate value estimates towards anchors. Even if you know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, anchors will probably still affect you. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one level, this makes sense because there's
Speaker 1: we of course have the adage a little knowledge is
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing. Uh And and certainly one can be
Speaker 1: knowledgeable in a field or or what not without being
Speaker 1: an expert in that area. There are gonna be holes
Speaker 1: in your knowledge. There's gonna be room for doubt and
Speaker 1: uh and and that and where there's doubt, there seems
Speaker 1: like there's a susceptibility to anchoring. I'm sure that's not
Speaker 1: always the case, but I think sometimes you've got some
Speaker 1: sort of analog of the Dunning Kruger effect. Going on
Speaker 1: where people who have more knowledge are going to be
Speaker 1: a little more cautious people have less knowledge. You're just
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, whatever, I'll give this answer. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's more room for ego to get involved
Speaker 1: to like take the the Highland or two question, as
Speaker 1: I said, trivia about the budget of a film or
Speaker 1: the growth of the film. Like, that's not an interest
Speaker 1: area for me, and I'm not I'm not really hesitant
Speaker 1: to be way off the mark on it. But if
Speaker 1: it were a question about like a particular actor in
Speaker 1: the film, like who played the villain in Highlander too,
Speaker 1: which was because of course Michael Ironside. But if if
Speaker 1: that name wasn't instantly coming to my head, I would
Speaker 1: be less uh less brave about just blurting something out,
Speaker 1: you know, because this is something I should know. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be more cautious. Right. Well, the idea of
Speaker 1: ego does introduce something about motivation, right, You can have
Speaker 1: differential motivations and how you should try to answer questions.
Speaker 1: Maybe the problem is, um people just don't care enough
Speaker 1: to really try to answers answer these questions. Right, So
Speaker 1: what happens if you give people incentives to get the
Speaker 1: answer right, The answer is not much. Incentives and pay
Speaker 1: off for accuracy have not been shown to correct the
Speaker 1: anchoring effect. People are still affected by anchors And of
Speaker 1: course this comes back to the idea that it is
Speaker 1: an implicit process. Yeah, exactly, here's one that should be
Speaker 1: a should be a total deal breaker. Here's how you
Speaker 1: defeat the anchoring effect. Right for warning people, you say,
Speaker 1: there's this thing called the anchoring effect, and we're going
Speaker 1: to give you a number, and that number is probably
Speaker 1: going to contaminate, uh, the way in which you answer
Speaker 1: the question, So that number is going to bias your
Speaker 1: answer towards that number. Be aware of the anchoring effect. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: studies have shown this doesn't work. Even when you explain
Speaker 1: the anchoring effect to people and warn them that it
Speaker 1: may be biasing their thinking, they are still vulnerable to it.
Speaker 1: I want to try one out. This is just off off,
Speaker 1: just shooting from the hip. Here. How many dwarves are
Speaker 1: in the Disney movie Snow White in the seven Dwarves?
Speaker 1: More or less than thirty eight? Like, just running it
Speaker 1: through my mind, I feel the contamination of that question,
Speaker 1: even though the answer is obvious, even though there should
Speaker 1: be no rational reason to gravitate towards thirty eight, it
Speaker 1: it begins to introduce like weeds of of doubt. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean in the same way that I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever had this experience of like reading a
Speaker 1: an obvious like fake news article on the internet, like
Speaker 1: somebody posts something it's like from a conspiracy theory website
Speaker 1: or you know, one of those fake news websites, or
Speaker 1: something that's just obviously made up, is not from a
Speaker 1: reputable news source. Even though you know this is obviously untrue,
Speaker 1: you can kind of feel it's sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: creeping in this, like you don't have you don't you
Speaker 1: honestly put any credence in it being true, But just
Speaker 1: the fact that the words appear on the screen has
Speaker 1: some kind of like magical conjuring effect on your mind
Speaker 1: that makes you sort of start like entertaining doubts about reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, I've I've felt the same thing. And
Speaker 1: you see that too with just straight up tabloid coverage
Speaker 1: and slanderous statements, like the mere fact that it is
Speaker 1: pumped into a headline gives it a certain life that
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have. Okay, but what about on the individual level.
Speaker 1: Are are some of it is just going to be
Speaker 1: more susceptible than others. Uh, it does appear by based
Speaker 1: on some preliminary research that that is the case. But
Speaker 1: this this is not as solid as some of the
Speaker 1: other research. But preliminary research says that participants with high
Speaker 1: conscientiousness and that generally means things like self control and
Speaker 1: self discipline, and high agreeableness that's how long you how
Speaker 1: well you get along with others, and low extroversion meaning
Speaker 1: and people who are introverted. Those three things also coupled
Speaker 1: with high openness to experience, which these are all getting
Speaker 1: into the Big five personality traits, these things are are
Speaker 1: more susceptible to the anchoring effect. But like I said,
Speaker 1: the study cautions that these are these are not super
Speaker 1: solid results. This is just sort of like something that
Speaker 1: appears to possibly be true. Now, the question would be
Speaker 1: why those traits, Why would those things lend lends susceptibility
Speaker 1: to the anchoring effect. To quote from the two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven study, quote, individuals with high conscientiousness engage in more
Speaker 1: thorough thought processes before judgments are made. Those with high
Speaker 1: agreeableness take the provided anchors seriously, and high openness to
Speaker 1: experience influences individuals who are more sensitive to anchor cues. Also,
Speaker 1: they say that low extra version is possibly explained through
Speaker 1: a correlation with sad mood, which apparently increases susceptibility to
Speaker 1: the anchoring effect. As we explained earlier. Huh. Now, now
Speaker 1: the the openness, high openness to experience, that that rings
Speaker 1: true from here as well. And I feel like I've
Speaker 1: seen that represented in other studies looking at you know,
Speaker 1: individuals with liberal or conservative viewpoints. Uh, someone might ask,
Speaker 1: or are you open to new experiences? I see you're
Speaker 1: into uh, you know, extreme sports and uh and and
Speaker 1: other new novel things in your life. Sure, well, are
Speaker 1: you open to the idea that Voldemort would make a
Speaker 1: great president and Harry Potter was a terrorist? And maybe
Speaker 1: you are? You know, you're open to alternative viewpoints, alternative worldviews, right,
Speaker 1: And that kind of that kind of mind can be
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing because if you have a closed off mind,
Speaker 1: and it kind of runs both both ways, good information
Speaker 1: is not getting in, but also maybe bad information is
Speaker 1: less likely to get in. So so like I said
Speaker 1: that that that aspect of the argument, definitely I think
Speaker 1: rings true for me. Okay, here's another one. What about
Speaker 1: analytical intelligence? Will people with just greater cognitive abilities be
Speaker 1: better at avoiding the effects of anchoring? Uh? This is
Speaker 1: one where research is divided on the topic, at least
Speaker 1: to the time this meta review is under it can
Speaker 1: there were conflicting results. Essentially, some studies seem to find
Speaker 1: that those with greater cognitive abilities were more resistant to anchoring,
Speaker 1: and another study you found Nope, not the case. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we've seen plenty of studies before that show
Speaker 1: that very intelligent people can be deceived and can be
Speaker 1: self deceiving. So it would make sense that you're, you know,
Speaker 1: cognitive level would only have so much influence on your
Speaker 1: susceptibility to anchoring. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about in our Science Communication Breakdown episode
Speaker 1: is that being a smart person does not necessarily protect
Speaker 1: you against radicalizing yourself with untrue beliefs on a partisan basis.
Speaker 1: Maria Kanakova has an entire book, UH dealing with with
Speaker 1: con artists, and one of her key points is it
Speaker 1: very intelligent people can be duped by things like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smart people are vulnerable to con artists she's got a
Speaker 1: great story, and that it's not a great story. It's
Speaker 1: a sad story, but it's about like, what is it?
Speaker 1: A nuclear physicis cysts who gets taken in on this
Speaker 1: bizarre drug running scheme. Yes, I believe. So I have
Speaker 1: to revisit to make sure I got the details right.
Speaker 1: But that's a good book. Book. It's worth reading, by
Speaker 1: the way. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll give you a little
Speaker 1: advice on how to avoid the anchoring effect. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So the question you're obviously wondering about is
Speaker 1: you We've gone through all these reasons that the anchoring
Speaker 1: effect appears incredibly robust, despite the fact that people want
Speaker 1: to be able to avoid it and not have it
Speaker 1: influenced their thinking, it just seems to work every time.
Speaker 1: Uh So, how do you get around it? Well, this
Speaker 1: comes up in uh in the two thousand eleven paper
Speaker 1: we've been discussing, and the results are not great. There
Speaker 1: there is not a whole lot of hope to be offered. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the strategies that has been
Speaker 1: put out there is something that might work is what's
Speaker 1: known as the consider the opposite strategy. Now, this is
Speaker 1: effective at some types of d biasing. De Biasing is
Speaker 1: the process of, you know, trying to remove your personal bias,
Speaker 1: and so consider the opposite strategies are Actually it seems
Speaker 1: pretty simple, but it's worth learning how to do. When
Speaker 1: you think something is true, just sit there and come
Speaker 1: up with a list of reasons it might not be true.
Speaker 1: I think this is reasonable. Yeah, I mean a sort
Speaker 1: of a science fiction example would be Star Wars looking
Speaker 1: at the the the Empire. Is the Empire good or
Speaker 1: is the Empire bad? You're told that they're bad, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it's helpful to entertain the opposite viewpoint. Maybe the
Speaker 1: Empire was good. I don't know what the arguments for
Speaker 1: that would be, but okay, I don't know if it
Speaker 1: holds up anymore, but I feel like there was a
Speaker 1: time when when the argument was more convincing, or at
Speaker 1: least I couldn't see that the Empire is good, but
Speaker 1: I could see that the rebellion is also evil. Yes,
Speaker 1: I could say that the Empire and the rebellion and
Speaker 1: are both evil. Yeah. I feel like they're leaning into
Speaker 1: that more with the recent films, right, Maybe, I don't
Speaker 1: know But anyway, it comes back to a popular bit
Speaker 1: of advice that Timothy Leary gave everyone. Right. Yes, though
Speaker 1: a lot of people say that, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times they just think that means like, don't
Speaker 1: believe what the man tells. That is a part of it.
Speaker 1: But another very important part of thinking for yourself is
Speaker 1: questioning your internal authority, questioning what seems reasonable to you
Speaker 1: at this moment. And a good way to do that,
Speaker 1: apparently is to try this consider the opposite strategy. Just
Speaker 1: honestly do your best to come up with a list
Speaker 1: of reasons why what you're thinking is probably wrong. And
Speaker 1: then you consider that list and you think about are
Speaker 1: these reasons reasonable? And so this this has been shown
Speaker 1: to be effective at some things, some types of debiasing,
Speaker 1: but apparently it is not shown to be very effective
Speaker 1: with anchoring. Well that's not good at all. Nope. Another
Speaker 1: thing I want to read a quote from the paper.
Speaker 1: Quote in their popular book on behavioral economics, bell Ski
Speaker 1: and Golovich warned people that they may be prone to
Speaker 1: confirmation biases and anchoring if they make spending and investment
Speaker 1: decisions without research. They are especially loyal to certain brands
Speaker 1: or investments for the wrong reasons. They find it hard
Speaker 1: to see investments for less than they paid for them,
Speaker 1: and they rely on the seller's price rather than assessing
Speaker 1: the value themselves. They advise people to avoid the pitfall
Speaker 1: of anchoring by broadening their board of advisors, so listening
Speaker 1: to more people, doing more thorough research before making economic decisions,
Speaker 1: So not just relying on one anchor you're seeing in
Speaker 1: the store, but trying to get as much information in
Speaker 1: front of you as possible, looking at trends, being realistic
Speaker 1: and taking the longer view, and showing a little more
Speaker 1: humility when it comes to one's own judgment. And now
Speaker 1: all of this seems like good advice to me, But
Speaker 1: I don't know if this actually proves effective at overcoming
Speaker 1: the anchoring bias, right, because in all of these cases,
Speaker 1: if you just had this this checklist in your pocket,
Speaker 1: you would still being You would still be employing it
Speaker 1: explicitly trying to counter something that is occurring implicitly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now there are a few other ideas I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about that these are not tested, but I was
Speaker 1: trying to think, well, what could you do given how
Speaker 1: robust the anchoring effect is. Here's one whenever possible. What
Speaker 1: can you do to avoid the anchor? Like in situations
Speaker 1: where you're going to have to make a judgment and
Speaker 1: you know that you may be exposed to an anchor
Speaker 1: that works against you, just try to protect yourself from
Speaker 1: being exposed to it. Do whatever you can to avoid
Speaker 1: actually encountering that anchor. Huh. Then this sounds like a
Speaker 1: potential role for a an Internet browser filter, like an
Speaker 1: anchor filter, where it will take out any any leading
Speaker 1: numbers and whatever you might be reading. Yeah, but then again,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know how to do that right, Like,
Speaker 1: you don't want to cut yourself off from incoming information
Speaker 1: that may actually be useful to you. True, and you
Speaker 1: don't just remove all numbers from your news feed. That
Speaker 1: sounds a bit extreme. Yeah, here's another one that is
Speaker 1: much more, much more directly related to price negotiations. Uh,
Speaker 1: be preemptive, set your own anchor before you're a negotiating
Speaker 1: opponent has a chance to set an anchor for you. So,
Speaker 1: if you want to pay a lower price on something,
Speaker 1: apparently a good way to do that is you be
Speaker 1: the first person to say something and set your really
Speaker 1: really really low estimate or high estimate. If you're looking right,
Speaker 1: if you're paid, if you're trying to get paid, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: this sounds it sounds like the art of the deal
Speaker 1: right here. I don't think exactly is the art of
Speaker 1: the deal um, but yeah, you can use anchoring to
Speaker 1: your advantage. Most of the time people are going to
Speaker 1: be trying to use it against you, But there are
Speaker 1: cases where we're normal people who are not in advertising
Speaker 1: or sales or whatever can try to use this. For example,
Speaker 1: studies have actually been conducted and found that when you
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get a higher salary at work,
Speaker 1: you're trying to negotiate your pay up. Uh, salary negotiations
Speaker 1: that open with a very high request are more likely
Speaker 1: to end up with a higher salary offer in the end,
Speaker 1: even if the opening anchor you request is way too high.
Speaker 1: So going to every negotiation saying thirty million dollars, just
Speaker 1: go for the Sean Connery money right off the bat.
Speaker 1: I don't know if thirty million dollars, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it will. I don't know. Then again, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like if you're negotiating with a with a business person,
Speaker 1: they've probably been trained to some extent about some version
Speaker 1: of the anchoring effects. But then again, as we've discussed earlier,
Speaker 1: knowing that out, yeah, knowing about it doesn't make it
Speaker 1: not work on you. Hey, if you want to check
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