CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 230Decision-Making and Behavioral EconomicsCognitive Science and Education ResearchNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 122 of the 127 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources

Open access
Lieder, Falk, Griffiths, Thomas L., M. Huys, Quentin J., Goodman, Noah D.·2018·Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
DOI 10.3758/s13423-017-1286-8
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Cognitive biases, such as the anchoring bias, pose a serious challenge to rational accounts of human cognition. We investigate whether rational theories can meet this challenge by taking into account the mind's bounded cognitive resources. We asked what reasoning under uncertainty would look like if people made rational use of their finite time and limited cognitive resources. To answer this question, we applied a mathematical theory of bounded rationality to the problem of numerical estimation. Our analysis led to a rational process model that can be interpreted in terms of anchoring-and-adjustment. This model provided a unifying explanation for ten anchoring phenomena including the differential effect of accuracy motivation on the bias towards provided versus self-generated anchors. Our results illustrate the potential of resource-rational analysis to provide formal theories that can unify a wide range of empirical results and reconcile the impressive capacities of the human mind with its apparently irrational cognitive biases.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3758/s13423-017-1286-8

Cites

122 of 122 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 127 references

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Horvitz, E., Suermondt, H., & Cooper, G. (1989). Bounded conditioning: Flexible inference for decisions under scarce resources, Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (pp. 182–193). Mountain View: Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence.
  2. Lieder, F., Goodman, N. D., & Huys, Q. J. M. (2013). Controllability and resource-rational planning. In Pillow, J., Rust, N., Cohen, M., & Latham, P. (Eds.), Cosyne Abstracts.
  3. Simon, H. A. (1972). Theories of bounded rationality. Decision and Organization, 1, 161–176.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–230 of 230

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Lieder, F., Griffiths, T. L., M. Huys, Q. J., & Goodman, N. D.
Affiliations
  • University of Zurich (CH)
  • University of California, Berkeley (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Corresponding author
Lieder, Falk
ORCID
Venue
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2017-05-08
Volume
25
Issue
1
Pages
322-349
ISSN
  • 1069-9384 (ISSN-L)
  • 1531-5320
DOI
10.3758/s13423-017-1286-8
OpenAlex
W2613289252
Cited by
230
References
127
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 9
FWCI
1.95
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (unspecified)
Locations
  • Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (N00014-13-1-0341)
  • Office of Naval Research (N00014-13-1-0341, ONR MURI N00014-13-1-0341, MURI N00014-13-1-0341, N00014)
  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research (N00014-13-1-0341, FA‐9550‐10‐1‐0232)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Cognitive Science and Education Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
Keywords
anchoring effect, anchoring and adjustment, bounded rationality, cognitive resources, uncertainty reasoning, numerical estimation, accuracy motivation
MeSH terms
Heuristics, Cognition, Humans, Motivation, Probability, Problem Solving, Bias, Uncertainty

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review