Say you get a large group of people and split them into three groups. The first group gets this question:
What is the length of the Mississippi river?
The second group gets these questions:
Is the Mississippi river greater or less than 70 miles long?
What is the length of the Mississippi river?
The third group gets these:
Is the Mississippi river greater or less than 2000 miles long?
What is the length of the Mississippi river?
When Jacowitz and Kahneman tried this in 1995, they found that the groups had median estimates of 800 miles, 300 miles, and 1500 miles, respectively.
In theory at least, the initial greater / less questions provide no information, and so shouldn't change the final... (read 2249 more words →)
I made the change to "irrelevant anchors", thanks.
What's funny is that these kinds of small changes (a piece of paper vs. spinning a wheel) might be responsible for if the effects appear or not, at least if you take the published research at face value.