The Stepwise Anchoring Paradigm: Measuring Reliable Components of Anchoring and Adjustment as the Next Step in Moderator Research

Although anchoring research has explored personality moderators for at least 13 years, it has not produced any robust findings. The reason for this surprising fact is rooted in the problem that most anchoring tasks have unacceptable reliability levels. In a preregistered experiment, we introduce a paradigm that we call the stepwise anchoring paradigm. It is based on the incumbent insufficient adjustment model of anchoring and previous research by Frech et al. (2020). Using the stepwise anchoring paradigm and estimates of animals’ weights, we reliably measured parameters of anchoring effects and investigated whether these parameters were correlated with theoretically relevant personality traits (i.e., cognitive reflection and impulsiveness). The reliability of the number of adjustment steps was acceptable (α = .869, 12 items, N = 125) and much higher than the reliability of the total adjustment (α = .387), which has previously been used as an indicator of susceptibility to anchoring. However, we found no robust anchoring effects and no correlations between anchoring parameters and impulsivity or cognitive reflection. Thus, although a method for reliably measuring the susceptibility to anchoring is now available, its validity is still questionable.