Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior Read Online Free PDF

process:
     
Determine the average salary for that type of position (perhaps through personal experience or a quick Google search).
Judge the reputation of the hiring company (whether the company seems above or below average).
Mentally start from the average salary and adjust your desired salary according to the reputation of the hiring company. If the company is very prestigious and reputable, you would likely adjust your desired salary upward from the average (and vice versa).
    In that scenario, the average salary is considered a “self-generated anchor” because you created that anchor to produce your desired salary.
    Self-generated anchors are used in many different circumstances, not just desired salaries. In one study, people were asked to give the freezing point of vodka—a question that most people were stumped to answer—and so they used the freezing point of water as an anchor point. People who realized that the freezing point of water was 0° Celsius realized that the freezing point of vodka must be lower, and they adjusted their estimate according to that anchor (Epley & Gilovich, 2006).
    Although anchoring can lead to more accurate judgments (such as people who used the freezing point of water as an anchor point), it usually leads to poor judgments when we rely on the second reason behind our use of anchors: when we use anchors to exert less mental effort.
    Exert Less Mental Effort. By nature, humans are lazy. Though we’re motivated to produce accurate judgments, we often try to produce those judgments using the least amount of effort possible. Unfortunately, when we use anchors as a shortcut for our decision making, we usually fail to achieve our primary goal of forming an accurate judgment.
    The following are two specific types of anchoring shortcuts that we sometimes use (and which often lead to poor judgments).
    Plausible Outcome Reached . Remember when I asked you to estimate the probability of purchasing my next book? With such a hazy question, estimating your exact probability would have been fairly difficult. Rather than pull a number from thin air, you likely generated a range of reasonable probabilities.
    Let’s assume that you generated a range of 50–70 percent (which could have been produced either consciously or nonconsciously). If the initial anchor point was 90 percent, you would have determined your exact probability by adjusting downward from 90 percent until you reached the first plausible estimate in your range—in this case, it would have been 70 percent (the very top of your range of probabilities). On the flip side, if the initial anchor point was 10 percent, you would have determined your estimate by adjusting upward from 10 percent until you reached the first probability within your range—in this case, it would have been 50 percent (the very bottom of your range of probabilities). The takeaway: anchoring can produce inaccurate judgments because we often adjust from an anchor point until we reach the outermost estimate within a range of plausible judgments (Epley & Gilovich, 2006).
    Applying that principle to courtrooms, suppose that the average sentencing length for a particular crime ranges from 2 to 4 years. If the prosecutor demands a sentence of 5 years, then the judge is likely to start from 5 years and adjust his sentence downward until he reaches the outermost sentence of 4 years. If the defense demands a sentence of 1 year, then the judge is likely to start from 1 year and adjust his sentence upward until he reaches the outermost sentence of 2 years. In either case, the difference is 2 years—a full 2 years of someone’s life would be completely dependent on an arbitrary number presented to the judge.
    Availability Heuristic . Another poor use of anchoring can be found in the availability heuristic , the tendency to evaluate the probability of an event by how easily an instance comes to our mind. When we receive an anchor, we might reflect on instances where that