You have to hire one candidate among two for a given position. You look at the reports of the HR interviews and find the following key conclusions of the reports.
Sophie: smart-kind-pretty-genereous-careless-messy-lazy
Margaret: lazy-messy-careless-genereous-pretty-kind-smart
Who do you hire?
Have a second look at their description…aren’t they the same?
Anchoring effect is the fact to overweigh the first piece of information we get to judge someone or solve a problem. It is especially important in our social interactions where we tend to rely too much on our first impression.
Look at a visual illustration of the Anchoring Effect in the video below.
References:
Thinking fast and slow, D.Kahneman
For business applications:
“Avoiding the quicksand: Ten techniques for more agile corporate resource allocation,” McKinsey Quarterly, October 2013