Lee Chang-Yuan, Morewedge Carey K
Department of Marketing, Questrom School of Business, Boston University.
Psychol Sci. 2022 Jan;33(1):60-75. doi: 10.1177/09567976211024254. Epub 2021 Dec 8.
We introduce a theoretical framework distinguishing between anchoring effects, anchoring bias, and judgmental noise: Anchoring effects require anchoring bias, but noise modulates their size. We tested this framework by manipulating stimulus magnitudes. As magnitudes increase, psychophysical noise due to scalar variability widens the perceived range of plausible values for the stimulus. This increased noise, in turn, increases the influence of anchoring bias on judgments. In 11 preregistered experiments ( = 3,552 adults), anchoring effects increased with stimulus magnitude for point estimates of familiar and novel stimuli (e.g., reservation prices for hotels and donuts, counts in dot arrays). Comparisons of relevant and irrelevant anchors showed that noise itself did not produce anchoring effects. Noise amplified anchoring bias. Our findings identify a stimulus feature predicting the size and replicability of anchoring effects-stimulus magnitude. More broadly, we show how to use psychophysical noise to test relationships between bias and noise in judgment under uncertainty.
我们引入了一个理论框架，区分锚定效应、锚定偏差和判断噪声：锚定效应需要锚定偏差，但噪声会调节其大小。我们通过操纵刺激大小来测试这个框架。随着大小增加，由于标量变异性导致的心理物理噪声会扩大对刺激合理值的感知范围。这种增加的噪声反过来又会增加锚定偏差对判断的影响。在11个预先注册的实验（N = 3552名成年人）中，对于熟悉和新颖刺激的点估计（例如酒店和甜甜圈的预订价格、点阵中的点数），锚定效应随着刺激大小的增加而增加。相关锚和无关锚的比较表明，噪声本身不会产生锚定效应。噪声放大了锚定偏差。我们的研究结果确定了一个预测锚定效应大小和可重复性的刺激特征——刺激大小。更广泛地说，我们展示了如何利用心理物理噪声来测试不确定性下判断中偏差与噪声之间的关系。
