Is there general agreement that anchoring experiments are a subversion of an evolutionary trait that is generally beneficial? It’s rare to be in a group, be presented with a “random” number, and then be asked a question whose answer will be an unrelated number. Unless you have a lot of group status, it’s much less harmful to your standing to be wrong with many others frequently than it is beneficial to be right alone infrequently. It’s only recent in our evolutionary history that the balance has tipped in the other direction.
Is there general agreement that anchoring experiments are a subversion of an evolutionary trait that is generally beneficial? It’s rare to be in a group, be presented with a “random” number, and then be asked a question whose answer will be an unrelated number. Unless you have a lot of group status, it’s much less harmful to your standing to be wrong with many others frequently than it is beneficial to be right alone infrequently. It’s only recent in our evolutionary history that the balance has tipped in the other direction.