You are more likely to make judgments based on bias and intuition rather than facts and statistics
You tend to jump to a conclusion about a scenario based on the sample provided; this logic also applies to numbers. You believe that samples involving small numbers come from a small population. The moment you learn that five million people work in the public sector in Bulgaria, you’re inclined to believe that Bulgaria’s population is small just because of the sample. These are some of the things that shape how you view and evaluate your environment.
⚡️The anchoring effect occurs when a particular value for an unknown quantity influences your estimate of that quantity.
Humans place value on something because of what anchors the number associated with it. Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman invented the fortune wheel rigged to stop at 10 or 65. Students of the University of Oregon then participated in this experiment. They were supposed to spin the wheel and then answer two questions about the percentage of African nations in the UN. The first one was: “is that percentage higher or lower than the wheel’s number?” The second one was:
“what is your guess about the actual percentage?” Those who drew 1o from the wheel gave lower percentages, and those with 65 answered with higher ones. Therefore, the random number they noticed before answering the questions subconsciously influenced their judgment.
The ease with which you can come up with examples determines the frequency of events. Immediately an example comes to mind, your brain pieces together instances of a similar occurrence, and your mind then tricks you into believing that such a situation is familiar.
“The psychological mechanisms that produce anchoring make us far more suggestible than most of us would want to be.”
Daniel Kahneman
A similar effect comes from traumatic events or even news about those events. Consequently, after you stumble upon the report of a horrific plane crash with no survivors, the chances of you deciding to fly on a plane lower dramatically. You always knew about the possibility of accidents, but now you know about a specific example, the activity seems more dangerous than before.