What is Anchoring and Why Should You Care?
It’s an important mental model well worth learning
Introducing anchoring — a crucial mental model from the discipline of psychology that is very relevant in your professional life, but also your personal life. Once you’re familiar with this one, you might just start to notice it everywhere! ⚓
What is Anchoring?
Anchoring is a cognitive bias that describes the tendency for an individual to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (known as the “anchor”) when making decisions.
So what does that mean in practice? There’s one study I like in particular that illustrates the phenomenon of anchoring quite nicely.
The Gandhi Anchoring Study
Researchers split a bunch of people into two groups, and then asked them to estimate the age of the the famous activist Mahatma Gandhi. Each group was asked the question in a different way (or with a different anchor.)
The first group were asked: “Did Gandhi die before or after the age of 9?”.
