Fooled by facts: quantifying anchoring bias through a large-scale experiment

Taha Yasseri () and Jannie Reher
Additional contact information
Taha Yasseri: University College Dublin
Jannie Reher: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Journal of Computational Social Science, 2022, vol. 5, issue 1, No 42, 1021 pages

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Anchoring bias; Quasi-experiment; Social influence; Information processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s42001-021-00158-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jcsosc:v:5:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s42001-021-00158-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iences/journal/42001

DOI: 10.1007/s42001-021-00158-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Computational Social Science is currently edited by Takashi Kamihigashi

More articles in Journal of Computational Social Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().