Individual differences in anchoring: Traits and experience

Anchoring is a well-known effect leading to bias in estimation in various decision-making contexts. Previous research examining the role of individual differences in anchoring susceptibility has found weak and unreliable results. In this study anchoring was examined in a simulated poker-like card game, among people with varying levels of academic achievement and using a wide variety of psychometric tests for both cognitive ability and decision style/personality factors. Overall, anchoring susceptibility was largely unrelated to demographic and cognitive measures but weakly correlated to measures of preference and aptitude for rationality. Performance generally improved during the course of the card game task, suggesting that participants became less susceptible to anchoring with experience and these improvements were weakly-to-moderately related to demographic, cognitive and decision style measures. That is, while there were few significant predictors of overall performance, cognitive ability measures and decision styles were related to decreases in anchoring susceptibility.

► Little evidence links anchoring susceptibility to individual differences (IDs).
► This is complicated by differences between expert and novices' bias susceptibility.
► We examine IDs and directly measure expertise on an anchoring task.
► IDs do not, directly, predict susceptibility to anchoring.
► IDs predict the acquisition of expertise, which reduces anchoring susceptibility.