In a wide range of empirical empirical paradigms, sadness has been associat
ed with mole extensive and detail-oriented thinking than happiness, resulti
ng in reductions in judgemental bins that arise from reliance on stereotype
s and other simple decision heuristics. It was hypothesized that anchoring
would constitute a significant exception to this general pattern. Recent re
search on anchoring indicates that an active thought process underlies the
emergence of this bias. If sad people are likely to think more actively abo
ut the judgmental anchor than their neutral-mood counterparts, their subseq
uent judgments should be more likely to be assimilated toward this referenc
e point. This prediction was confirmed in two experiments demonstrating tha
t sad people are indeed more susceptible to anchoring bias than are people
in a neutral mood. Moreover; this effect generalized over judgments in posi
tive, neutral, and negative content domains.