Toward a theory of own‐anchoring in judgments of other people's external characteristics

Mårten Eriksson,Linda Langeborg

doi:10.1002/jts5.91

Abstract

The own-anchor effect concerns the assimilation of judgments of other people's external characteristics such as age, weight, and height toward the estimator's own characteristics. The phenomenon is related to theories of social projection and classical anchoring. It has previously been described as an estimation bias in studies of eyewitness accuracy and has been measured by the correlation between the estimates and the participants' own corresponding characteristics. We suggest that the term own-anchor effect should be reserved for cases when the estimate and the estimator's own value both are bigger than the target person's value, or when both are smaller than the target person's value. Two subtypes of own-anchoring and their association to different target persons of different ages and sizes are also described. A new index of own-anchoring based on the deviation between the estimate and the target persons' values is introduced, and differences between the two measures are discussed, as well as the implications for moderation by gender.

Highlights

In estimations of other people's external characteristics such as age, weight, and height, which can be measured on objective scales, individuals tend to assimilate their estimates to their own characteristics, resulting for instance in taller people make higher estimates of other peoples' height than shorter people do
The own-anchoring phenomenon is related to studies of egocentric biases in judgment of other peoples' internal characteristics or states often studied in social psychology, for example the false consensus effect (Krueger & Zeiger, 1993) and judgments of personality traits in studies of social projection (Robbins & Krueger, 2005), in which other people are expected to be similar to them
We have proposed a new definition of own-anchoring in judgments of other people's external characteristics that utilizes objective measures and incorporates information on the relation between the estimated value, the target person's characteristics, and the characteristics of the person making the judgment

Summary

Introduction

In estimations of other people's external characteristics such as age, weight, and height, which can be measured on objective scales, individuals tend to assimilate their estimates to their own characteristics, resulting for instance in taller people make higher estimates of other peoples' height than shorter people do. The own-anchoring phenomenon is related to studies of egocentric biases in judgment of other peoples' internal characteristics or states often studied in social psychology, for example the false consensus effect (Krueger & Zeiger, 1993) and judgments of personality traits in studies of social projection (Robbins & Krueger, 2005), in which other people are expected to be similar to them These studies typically rely on subjective ratings of both the own characteristics and those of other peoples', and lack corresponding objective measures. The same process is central in classical anchoring effects, which concerns assimilation of estimates toward explicit comparison values (i.e., anchors, see Furnham & Boo, 2011, for a review) or implicit comparison values (e.g., Epley & Gilovich, 2005)

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