Anchoring is the cognitive bias wherein an initial value — presented as a number, standard, or reference point — exerts disproportionate influence on subsequent judgments and estimates, even when the anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant. The mechanism operates through two paths: selective accessibility (the anchor primes related information in memory) and adjustment insufficiency (subjects start from the anchor but fail to adjust far enough to reach the true value). Anchoring persists across expertise domains, ages cultures, and manifests in pricing negotiations, legal sentencing, medical diagnosis, and probabilistic forecasting. Its persistence mechanism is language and teaching — anchored frames propagate through instruction, precedent, and repeated exposure to the same reference points. [formal: anchoring | substrate: mind | horizon: hours | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.13]
Accepted ontology entry
anchoring
Anchoring is the cognitive bias wherein an initial value — presented as a number, standard, or reference point — exerts disproportionate influence on subsequent judgments and estimates, even when the anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant. The…
Definition
Why it is in scope
The human-made cognitive bias whereby initial information (the anchor) disproportionately influences subsequent judgments and decisions. The map is the category humans built to pick out this systematic error in quantitative estimation and decision-making.
Names and aliases
- anchoringen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrmwufxy01pxd1nllvxs1o1sINSTANCE_OF →
anchoring IS a specific kind of cognitive-bias (specific→general). A bias where initial exposure to a value disproportionately influences subsequent judgments.
- cmrf51qwi005rcqqtmpyziy84DEPENDS_ON →
Remove memory and anchoring stops operating: the anchoring effect requires remembering the initial anchor value and adjusting from it. Without memory, no anchor reference exists. Law 8 removal test passes.
Relations to this entry
- cmrp46jzp06a8d1nll2wuogcn← DEPENDS_ON
The concept of anchoring-bias depends on the concept of anchoring: without the concept of an anchor (initial reference point that disproportionately influences decisions), the concept of anchoring-bias (the tendency to over-rely on such anchors) cannot operate. Removal test: remove anchoring and anchoring-bias loses its entire referent — it stops operating, not just being sayable. Law 8.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 17, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 02f0c64f26770b83ea2180ae4f817ea6c2da4e25ab43f6504ae24d7b3953e556