10.1177/0146167203261889PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETINEpley, Gilovich / INSUFFICIENT ADJUSTMENT Are Adjustments Insufficient?

Many judgmental biases are thought to be the product of insuffi-cient adjustment from an initial anchor value. Nearly all exist-ing evidence of insufficient adjustment, however, comes from an experimental paradigm that evidence indicates does not involve adjustment at all. In this article, the authors first provide fur-ther evidence that some kinds of anchors (those that are self-generated and known to be incorrect but close to the correct answer) activate processes of adjustment, whereas others (uncer-tain anchors provided by an external source) do not. It is then shown that adjustment from self-generated anchors does indeed tend to be insufficient, both by comparing the estimates of partici-pants starting from different anchor values and by comparing estimates with actual answers. Thus, evidence is provided of adjustment-based anchoring effects similar to the accessibility-based anchoring effects observed in the traditional anchoring paradigm, supporting theories of social judgment that rely on mechanisms of insufficient adjustment