Abstract
Through a large-scale online field experiment, we provide new empirical evidence for the presence of the anchoring bias in people’s judgement due to irrational reliance on a piece of information that they are initially given. The comparison of the anchoring stimuli and respective responses across different tasks reveals a positive, yet complex relationship between the anchors and the bias in participants’ predictions of the outcomes of events in the future. Participants in the treatment group were equally susceptible to the anchors regardless of their level of engagement, previous performance, or gender. Given the strong and ubiquitous influence of anchors quantified here, we should take great care to closely monitor and regulate the distribution of information online to facilitate less biased decision making.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1001-1021 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Journal of Computational Social Science |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2022 |
Keywords
- Anchoring bias
- Information processing
- Quasi-experiment
- Social influence