Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Anchoring effect, the effect of precedent stimuli on subsequentnumerical estimation, is one of the most studied topics injudgment and decision making. Many researchers haveexamined its psychological processes from many perspectives.However, few studies have directly compared strength ofanchoring effects generated by different anchor types. Thepresent study involved a behavioral experiment (numericalestimation task after presenting an anchor) and compared theeffect size of anchoring effect on numerical estimations amongdifferent five anchors. We found that significant anchoringeffect occurred only in two types of anchor. Common twofeatures of these two anchors were representation of specificnumber and the dimensional equivalence between an anchorand a target in the numerical estimation task. Thus, thesefindings indicated that presentation of a specific number withdimensional equivalence as in the target of a numericalestimation task plays an important role in the generation ofrobust anchoring effect. Psychological mechanisms ongeneration of anchoring effect are discussed.