AUTHOR=Yik Michelle , Wong Kin Fai Ellick , Zeng Kevin J. TITLE=Anchoring-and-Adjustment During Affect Inferences JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=9 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02567 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02567 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

People can easily infer the thoughts and feelings of others from brief descriptions of scenarios. But how do they arrive at these inferences? Three studies tested how, through anchoring-and-adjustment, people used semantic and numerical anchors (irrelevant values provided by experimenters) in inferring feelings from scenario descriptions. We showed that in a between-subject design, people’s inference was biased toward anchoring information (Studies 1 and 2). People made fewer adjustments (anchoring increased) under time pressure in the high-anchor condition but not in the low-anchor condition (Study 3). When inferring affect from scenario descriptions, not only did people integrate their inference with the context, they adjusted away from the initial anchors provided by the experimenters. However, time pressure discouraged people from making adequate adjustments.