Study Of Anchoring Effect With Different Causal Attribution

Anchoring effect is the phenomenon which the estimated bias occurred when the desired value of judgment and decision closing to the initial value"anchor"in the uncertain circumstance. The anchoring effect has been proved in numerous decision-making issues and field judgment investigated. From the risk profiled problems such as the predication of stock market to the daily matters such as the effect of advertisement on the purchases of quantities decision; no matter wager estimation problem, legal judgment, normal intellectual question, price estimation, consultation and negotiation, or software assessment, self-efficacy evaluation, the Tversky and Kahneman research framework was used and developed.After Hyde initiated the attribution research, the attribution issues became a important topic of psychology research. There are two kinds of causal attribution, the broad sense causal attribution and the narrow sense one. The broad sense causal attribution is the process of people explains and illustrates all kinds of phenomenon such as natural phenomenon, sprite and culture phenomenon and society phenomenon. In such sense, causal attribution could mean all the process people recognize the world. The narrow sense causal attribution is to search the cause of the results, which means attribute the results of behaviors and events to some seasons.There are three experiments in the research. The preliminary experiment is to decide the anchor value including high anchor and low anchor of the 10 questions in the formal experiment, in order to show that to the testees during the formal experiment. The two formal experiments is to investigate the effect of four attribution methods (capability, endeavor, circumstance and luck) on the anchoring effect in high and low anchor value during the traditional anchoring effect condition (the estimated value is given based on the compare of question answers) and the effect of four attribution methods (capability, endeavor, circumstance and luck) on the anchoring effect in high and low anchor value during the basic anchoring effect condition(the estimated value is given directly), respectively.The hypothesis of this research is that the attribution methods will influence the anchoring effect. During experiment one, we found that there is no considerable differences among the judgments of testees using different attribution methods in the traditional anchoring effect condition. It means there is no difference of anchoring effect among the testees using different attribution methods. We could believe that attribution methods don't influence the anchoring effect in the traditional anchoring effect condition. During experiment two, there exist considerable differences among the judgments of testees using different attribution methods in the basic anchoring effect condition. It means there are differences of anchoring effect among the testees using different attribution methods. We could believe that attribution methods influence the anchoring effect in the basic anchoring effect condition. The results of the experiment support the hypothesis of this research. Based on the results of the two experiments, it could conclude that causal attribution methods exist different consequences in the anchoring effect. As Kolb proposed, there are differences in individuals; there also exist judgment differences among individuals who prefer different judge and thinking style.