Social Cognition Out of the Lab Is Not a Fish Out of the Water: The case of anchoring effect

Abstract

The applicability of laboratory investigation to “real­?life” contexts is a common problem attributed to social sciences, in particular to experimental psychology. The question is: to what extent do the studies conducted in artificial environments allow us to draw conclusions and applications in real­?life contexts? This article proposes to contribute to the demystification of this "problem", using the anchoring effect as a case­?study. The anchoring effect – the assimilation of a numerical estimate about a target to a standard value – described by Tversky and Kahneman (1974), soon proved to be an experimental effect with great consistency and a lot of practical implications. Therefore, we present some evidences of anchoring effects in several contexts such as consumer, economic or judicial decisions. We also explore the main hypothesis about anchoring effect, and to what extent these theories and tests to these theories allowed to understand the anchoring phenomenon (...)

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17575/rpsicol.v26i2.274