The Effect of Accuracy Motivation on Anchoring and Adjustment: Do People Adjust from Provided Anchors?

Abstract:     
Increasing accuracy motivation often fails to increase adjustment away from provided anchors, a result that has led researchers to reject theories claiming that people effortfully adjust away from such anchors. We challenge this conclusion. First, we show that people are typically uncertain about which way to adjust from provided anchors, and that this uncertainty often causes people to believe that they have initially adjusted too far away from such anchors (Studies 1a and 1b). Then, we show that although accuracy motivation fails to increase the gap between provided anchors and final estimates when people are uncertain about the direction of adjustment, accuracy motivation does increase anchor-estimate gaps when people are certain about the direction of adjustment (Studies 2, 3a, and 3b). These results suggest that people do effortfully adjust away from provided anchors, but that the relationship between motivation and adjustment is more complicated than previously assumed. This conclusion has important theoretical implications, suggesting that currently emphasized distinctions between anchor types are not fundamental, and that ostensibly competing theories of anchoring are complementary.

Keywords: Judgment and Decision Making, Heuristics, Inferential Correction, Incentives

Working Paper Series