in an automatic and involuntary operation of System 1. System 2is therefore susceptible to the biasing influence of anchors that makesome information easier to retrieve. Furthermore
System 2 has no controlover the effect and no knowledge of it. The participants who have beenexposed to random or absurd anchors (such as Gandhiâs death at age144) confidently deny that this obviously useless information could haveinfluenced their estimate
and they are wrong.We saw in the discussion of the law of small numbers that a message
unless it is immediately rejected as a lie
will have the same effect on theassociative system regardless of its reliability. The gist of the message isthe story
which is based on whatever information is available
even if thequantity of the information is slight and its quality is poor: WYSIATI. Whenyou read a story about the heroic rescue of a wounded mountain climber
its effect on your associative memory is much the same if it is a newsreport or the synopsis of a film. Anchoring results from this associativeactivation. Whether the story is true
or believable
matters little
if at all.The powerful effect of random anchors is an extreme case of thisphenomenon
because a random anchor obviously provides no informationat all.Earlier I discussed the bewildering variety of priming effects
in whichyour thoughts and behavior may be influenced by stimuli to which you payno attention at all
and even by stimuli of which you are completelyunaware. The main moral of priming research is that our thoughts and ourbehavior are influenced
much more than we know or want
by theenvironment of the moment. Many people find the priming resultsunbelievable
because they do not correspond to subjective experience.Many others find the results upsetting
because they threaten the subjectivesense of agency and autonomy. If the content of a screen saver on anirrelevant computer can affect your willingness to help strangers withoutyour being aware of it
how free are you? Anchoring effects are threateningin a similar way. You are always aware of the anchor and even payattention to it
but you do not know how it guides and constrains yourthinking
because you cannot imagine how you would have thought if theanchor had been different (or absent). However
you should assume thatany number that is on the table has had an anchoring effect on you
and ifthe stakes are high you should mobilize yourself (your System 2) to combatthe effect.
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