Anchors – The Chain

• Is Wayne Rooney 45 years old?

• How old is Wayne Rooney?

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01837/wayne-rooney_1837352b.jpg

The answer is... 

26 (b. 1985), hair transplant aside.

It’s very likely (although you may struggle to believe it) that your guess was affected by the number 45 in the first question. The number 45 acted as an ‘anchor’.

The theory goes as thus: in your thinking you started by briefly considering whether Rooney is 45 (clearly not). Then you adjusted down until you reached a reasonable figure, and settled on that being your guess. If the age in the first question was 15 you would have started by considering whether Rooney is that young (again, clearly not). You would then have adjusted up until you reached a reasonable figure.

In 1974 two Israeli psychologists named Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published an article called ‘Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ (a heuristics is just a ‘rule of thumb’). It was a seminal work which demonstrated how people make systematic errors.  One of their key findings was that when people estimate something unknown, they start at an initial point and then adjust their answer. But people systematically use insufficient adjustment from that starting point: thus there is a ‘bias’ towards the initial point.

Even if we are made aware of the fact that anchors have an effect, and even if the anchor is plainly ridiculous, we are unable to completely rid ourselves of this bias. For example, anchoring may have an effect on your following answers

• Has Wayne Rooney scored 10,000 goals for Manchester United?

• How many goals has Wayne Rooney scored for Manchester United?

Aside from the obvious own goal that is his hair, he’s scored (as of April 2012) 180 goals for Man U.

Given that you are probably not reading this while on a TV quiz game show you would be forgiven for thinking ‘so far, so irrelevant’. 

But it might interest you to know that shops have been using anchors for years. Ever wondered why the most expensive car is the first thing you see when you enter the showroom? Or why the most expensive house is on the cover of the real estate magazine?

They’re trying to influence your estimate of what a reasonable price is by anchoring your mind at their highest price (i.e. an expensive convertible makes everything else look like a bargain). That way, you buy more expensive stuff. Clever eh?

So the next time you shopping don’t be influenced by the highest price in the shop. It's just a trick!

Footnote: 

Confusingly, in a chandlery an anchor may not be an anchor while literally anything that clearly isn’t an anchor could be an anchor. Funny old world.

Recommended listening:

The Chain by Fleetwood Mac