Akademiska omdömen under osäkerhet : en studie av kollektiva ankringseffekter i Vetenskapsrådets beredningsgrupper

The main focus of this study concerns the existence of anchoring effects in the peer review process of research proposals. According to the psychological theory of anchoring effects, once an anchor (represented by a number) is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from the anchor, and there is a common human tendency toward interpreting other information around the anchor. This effect is commonly seen as a general flaw in human judgment, a cognitive bias that stems from a specific heuristic that guides people when they involve their intuition in order to solve a problem. In the following study, this cognitive bias will be analysed from a sociological point of view, that is, as a collective phenomenon rather than an individual one. It will also be applied to a new empirical case, the peer review process of research proposals. The anchoring effects have here been investigated using a meeting ethnographic approach. The evidence comes from direct observations of ten panel groups at the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The analysis suggest that collective anchoring effects emerge as a result of the combination of the evaluation techniques that are being used (grading scales and middle ranking) and the efforts of the evaluators to reach consensus. The author suggests that what many commentators and evaluators have earlier interpreted as a certain proportion of chance in the peer review process, might instead be better understood as anchoring effects