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The Shadow of Anchors Shakes the Mind—The Power of Illusions Created by Numbers (January 2026) The anchoring effect is the phenomenon where an unrelated number presented just before a question quietly yet surely twists our judgment. Though numbers themselves should hold no meaning, System 1—our intuitive thinking system—grabs onto them as cues, arbitrarily creating a reference point for our answers. The more uncertain the question, the more we lean on these numbers, pulling our judgments toward them. This illusion is amplified by the associative power of numbers and the brain's tendency to instantly seek connections. Even unrelated numbers become psychologically incorporated into the context, slipping into the cognitive flow. For example, if presented with a large number right before being asked to estimate a city's population, people tend to answer higher than the actual figure. This is because the number acts as priming, reshaping the horizon of judgment. Anchoring ma
nipulates us in many everyday situations: negotiations, price judgments, real estate valuations, shopping scenarios. Once a number is presented as an anchoring point, subsequent judgments are merely adjusted incrementally, leaving the fundamental bias intact. This is precisely why careful reevaluation by System 2 is essential. Whenever you sense even the slightest pull from a number, pausing to reconsider can help you escape the anchor. Online, research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky is widely cited. Their research on decision-making under uncertainty, in particular, forms the experimental foundation for the anchoring effect. Furthermore, global behavioral economics literature highlights numerous real-life examples of anchoring lurking in daily life: initial price tag displays, comparing sale prices, and insurance premium estimates. Anchoring is not merely a psychological phenomenon; it is a universal and powerful cognitive bias influencing modern purchasing behavior an
d political judgments.