Chapter 02 of 5
The Anchor Drops
How the first number you hear quietly shapes your judgement.
- The Bias
Anchoring
When estimating a number, people are pulled toward whatever figure they encountered first — even an irrelevant one.
- 1974
The rigged wheel
Tversky and Kahneman spun a wheel rigged to stop at either 10 or 65, then asked people to estimate the share of African countries in the UN.
- The Result
Random number, real effect
People who saw 65 gave much higher estimates than those who saw 10 — even though the wheel obviously had nothing to do with the answer.
17 more cards in this chapter
Could you answer this?
In Tversky and Kahneman's 1974 study, what did they use to create a random anchor?
🎲 The Glitches in Our Thinking
- 01Two SystemsFast intuition, slow reasoning — and the friendship that mapped them.
- 02The Anchor DropsHow the first number you hear quietly shapes your judgement.
- 03Losses Hurt MoreWhy losing £100 feels worse than winning £100 feels good.
- 04Easy to Imagine, Easy to BelieveWhy vivid stories warp our sense of risk.
- 05NudgedHow small design changes steer big decisions — for better or worse.