Anchoring Bias

Anchoring bias encompasses a difficulty in changing one’s mind. Also perceived as stubbornness. An “anchor” is a point of focus or fixation. Once anchored, the mind does not take new information into account. Yeah…stubbornness.

For example, two people, Jill and Jake, are looking at houses. They both agree that they are looking for a house with 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a den, and a 2-car garage. Jill does not care about the color; Jake hates green. After looking at over a dozen houses that do not match the criteria, they come across a house that has everything they wanted and more (a 3-car garage and 5 bedrooms). Better yet, it’s in their price range.

It should be a no-brainer, right? Wrong. They drive up, and Jake wants to turn around and leave. Jill convinces him to go inside and look. There’s no green inside. It’s beautiful. They can afford it. But Jake is grumpy the whole time and complains that the house is green on the outside. He shuts down. He wants to keep looking.

In the example above, Jake is anchored to the color. He isn’t interested in the house. It doesn’t matter that it can be painted a different color. It doesn’t matter that everything else about the house is beyond expectations. To him, the color green was enough for him to want to disregard the place as an option. He was ready to forgo even looking at the inside. His mind was ignoring anything beyond the exterior color.