Subliminal anchoring: The effects of subliminally presented numbers on probability estimates

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Abstract

Previous research demonstrated that if attention is paid to a supraliminally presented number, a subsequent quantitative estimate assimilates towards this number (the anchor effect). One explanation states that this effect is merely caused by the heightened accessibility level of the anchor value itself. Based on this numeric priming account and generalizing from subliminal priming studies, we expected a short-lived subliminal anchor effect. We presented participants subliminally with a low or high anchor value (10 or 90) and next they had to estimate the probability of an epidemic. Half of them were pressed to do this quickly. Only under time pressure, a significant anchor effect emerged.

Section snippets

Participants and design

Sixty-two students of Leiden University participated in this experiment (82% female). They were randomly assigned to one of the cells of a 2 (Anchor: low, high) × 2 (Time Pressure: absent, present) between participants factorial design. The main dependent variable was the estimate of the probability of recurrence of an epidemic of pestilence of the lungs in India within a year. This probability was expressed as a percentage.

Procedure

Participants were invited to the laboratory, where they were placed in

Letter combinations

In general, participants did well on the letter combination task. On average each letter combination had been judged accurately (i.e., accurate identification of predominance of capital or lower case letters) by 89% of the participants. The conclusion is that participants were concentrated while working on this task in which the anchor value was presented subliminally.

A 2 (Anchor: low, high) × 2 (Time Pressure: absent, present) ANOVA with as dependent variable the total number of errors made in

Discussion

The results of our study indicate that there is a subliminal anchor effect and that this effect is short-lived. The probability estimate assimilated towards the subliminally presented anchor value in the conditions with time pressure.

In the Introduction section, we described two reasons to expect an anchor effect only in the conditions with time pressure. One reason is that in the conditions with time pressure, the time between the last subliminal presentation of the anchor value and the

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    We thank Ap Dijksterhuis for valuable advice, and Henk Aarts and Sander Koole for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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