Does anchoring vary across cultures? Expanding the Many Labs analysis

Abstract

AbstractNumerous investigations have examined anchoring effects, but most of them studied individuals from similar cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Replication studies have shown that anchoring heuristics have heterogeneous effects across different cultural groups. In the present investigation, we examined this heterogeneity by looking for associations between effect size and cultural values orientation. We conducted pre‐registered meta‐analyses of four anchoring tasks, using open data provided by previous works and collected from 6,344 participants in 10 countries. The analyses confirmed that anchoring effects display strong heterogeneity between cultures. Moreover, specific cultural values orientations explained substantial amounts of variability in anchoring effect sizes between cultures: Intellectual Autonomy and Egalitarianism were negatively correlated with anchoring effect size, as we had expected. Surprisingly, Harmony was also negatively correlated with anchoring effect size, whereas Mastery had a positive association. These results suggest that cultural differences can play an important role in observed anchoring effect size.