For example, in one study subjects were asked to give the percent of African countries in the United Nations. In each case, a number between 0 and 100 was assigned as an initial value and the subject was asked if this was too high or two low, and what adjustment needed to be made. Despite the fact that each of the subjects knew that the initial value had been determined randomly (by spinning a ...

We report the results of an experiment probing the relative influence of centering and anchoring biases in reconstructive memory for line lengths. On each of 90 trials participants (N=120) viewed a target line, which they reproduced after a delay by adjusting a response line. We manipulated the starting size of this response line in three conditions: one provided an anchoring bias opposite the ...

Voting online with explicit ratings could largely reflect people’s preferences and objects’ qualities, but ratings are always irrational, because they may be affected by many unpredictable factors like mood, weather, as well as other people’s votes. By analyzing two real systems, this paper reveals a systematic bias embedding in the individual decision-making processes, namely people tend to gi...

Current explanations for anchoring phenomena seem to be unable to account for the diversity of effects found by 40 years of research. Additionally, the theories do not have much to say about the processes that make anchors so resilient to modification. I argue that by focusing on the mechanisms involved in spatial representation, we can account for most anchoring effects which have spatial comp...

Psychologists have identified several limitations to, and biases in, human decision-making processes. One such bias is the anchoring and adjustment effect, which has been demonstrated to be robust both inside and outside the experimental Ž . laboratory. Some decision support systems DSS have been designed to lessen the effects of decision-making limitations with promising results. This study te...

Combining density functional theory calculations for molecular electronic structure with a Green function method for electron transport, we calculate from first principles the molecular conductance of benzene connected to two Au leads through different anchoring atoms-S, Se, and Te. The relaxed atomic structure of the contact, different lead orientations, and different adsorption sites are full...