Sample response

When making decisions, we often rely on past experience or the information that is immediately available to us.  This is referred to as “system 1 thinking.” In order to reduce the amount of thinking required, we often rely on “heuristics” or mental short-cuts to make decisions. Heuristics are a cognitive bias – and although they often help us to make decisions, they sometimes lead to illogical or incorrect decisions or conclusions.

One example of a cognitive bias is anchoring bias. Anchoring bias is when the first piece of information we receive influences our decisions.  For example, when we hear that the original price of a good was 100 dollars but is now marked down to 80 dollars, we find that more attractive than walking into a store and seeing the same thing for 80 dollars.  Seeing the 100 first makes us feel like we are getting a better deal. The value of a good is ambiguous – that is, we don’t know how much it should be, so this information helps us to form an opinion and make a decision.

One study that showed this cognitive bias was done by Englich and Mussweiler. They wanted to see if anchoring bias would affect a judge's sentencing. A sample of trial judges with less than one year of experience was given a rape case and asked, based on the evidence, how long the punishment should be. In one group they were told that the prosecution recommended a 34-month sentence; in the other group a 2-month sentence. The study showed that when given the suggestion of 34 months, the students recommended on average a longer sentence. Since they would not have an absolute sense of how many months to punish the offender, they used the “anchor” that they were given to make their decision.  This is an example of how a cognitive bias may affect one’s behaviour.

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