Anchoring does not activate examples associated with the anchor value

In the standard anchoring paradigm, people first compare a selected attribute of a target to a numeric value—an anchor. A subsequent absolute judgment of the target's attribute value is biased in the direction of the anchor. A prominent theory of the anchoring effect, the selective accessibility model, argues that people make the initial comparison by focusing on similarities between the target and the anchor, which activates information compatible with the anchor value being the target value. This activated information biases the subsequent estimate of the target value. To test the selective activation of information, the present study asked people to provide an example of the target's category following its comparison with an anchor. The attribute values of the provided examples were not biased in the direction of the anchor. However, they were positively associated with estimates of the target value. The study thus provides evidence for the use of activated information in the absolute judgment in the standard anchoring paradigm, but it does not show the selective activation of information compatible with the anchor value predicted by the selective accessibility model.