Considering the impossible: Explaining the effects of implausible anchors

Research on judgmental anchoring - the assimilation of a numeric estimate t owards a previously considered standard - has demonstrated that implausible anchors produce large effects. We propose an insufficient adjustment plus selective accessibility account for these effects. Specifically, judges may adjust from an implausible anchor until a plausible value for the target i s reached and may then test the hypothesis that the target's extension is s imilar to this value. if this is indeed the case, then differentially extre me implausible anchors should produce similar absolute estimates, because a djustment from any implausible anchor should terminate at the same value. R esults of two studies are consistent with this prediction. They show that i mplausible anchors that differ extremely produce similar absolute estimates . The implications of these findings for alternative models of anchoring ar e discussed.