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Decision & Choice | Anchoring Bias
THE THOUGHT
Our floor can easily become our ceiling.
After moving to Canada, applying for architect positions felt like an impossible sequence of unreasonable and expensive steps. I was alone, trying to sort out the world and myself, but one thing was clear: I needed work. So I turned to retail. If I could design a house, surely I could sell a Christmas tree.
But, when everything around us becomes unfamiliar, we become unfamiliar to ourselves. Our sense of worth is known to reset when the world does.
So when the hiring manager asked for expected salary, I said the number. Minimum wage. My “safe” reference point from research.
She paused. Her expression froze. "Why so low?"
I had no answer. Just the sudden realization that I had massively undervalued myself.
Retail taught me much about human nature. Lessons worth exploring another time. But that interview has stayed with me more than any other. I became my own ceiling.
Do you anchor yourself to the wrong numbers?
All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
THE DIVE
The First Number Wins
Anchoring bias is the cognitive tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we encounter. That initial data point becomes the reference point for everything that follows.
When a friend mentions they paid $500 for a haircut, suddenly $50 feels like a bargain. A job posting starting at $200k makes a $100k offer feel defeating. The first number becomes your measuring stick.
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky demonstrated this in their landmark 1974 study. They asked people to estimate the percentage of African nations in the United Nations. Before answering, participants spun a wheel that landed on either 10 or 65. Those who saw 10 guessed around 25%. Those who saw 65 guessed around 45%. A random number shaped their estimates by 20 percentage points.
When faced with uncertainty, our minds grasp for reference points. The first number becomes an unconscious starting place. We adjust from there, but never far enough.
In salary negotiations, whoever names a figure first sets the anchor. In real estate, the listing price shapes every counteroffer. In courtrooms, the first damages requested influence jury awards. We believe we are thinking independently while orbiting the first number we heard.
Anchoring Bias Process
Interestingly, knowing the bias does not stop it. Large-scale research shows that anchoring works on virtually everyone, regardless of how engaged or experienced they are. Anchoring persists even when the anchor is clearly irrelevant or when people are explicitly warned about the bias. Awareness is not immunity.
Perhaps the tension is this: we need reference points to think at all. Total objectivity would mean evaluating every decision in a vacuum. But anchors redefine what feels reasonable without our noticing.
COMMUNITY
THE SHIFT
Setting Impossible Anchors
Our brains seek reference points whether we want them to or not. So here is an approach I am trying: set our own impossible anchors before the world sets realistic ones for us.
Choose a metric that feels unreachable. Someone making $120k anchors to $135k next year. What if we anchored to $350k instead? Use it as a reference point rather than a goal. Let it warp our sense of reasonable.
The transformation happens in the distortion. When $350k becomes our anchor, $150k offers look different. Skill gaps become visible. Networks shift. What felt ambitious now feels like adjustment.
Try it across multiple areas. Anchor fitness to an athlete, not current baseline. Anchor relationships to depth never experienced. Anchor creative output to masters.
The risk is obvious. We might fail spectacularly. But we will fail toward something far beyond where careful, realistic anchors would have taken us.
Pick one area. Find the most impossible reference point you can stomach. Let it haunt you. Watch what adjustments your brain starts making.
Use a tool like Decision Journal App to track what changes when you anchor to the impossible. Log your decisions and watch how your new reference point shifts what feels reasonable.
What becomes possible when impossible is your floor?
NOTEWORTHY
Read: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman — Nobel winner reveals how two thinking systems create anchoring bias and quietly shape our decisions.
Watch: Are We in Control of Our Own Decisions? by Dan Ariely — Behavioral economist uses visual illusions and experiments to show how anchors manipulate choices without awareness.
Listen: Anchoring Bias from Data Science Ethics Podcast — How first prices affect sales and diagnoses, plus practical strategies to guard against this bias.
COMMUNITY
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