How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

“I Recently Heard That…Therefore…”
Which leads us to the next big shortcut: we’re often disproportionately swayed
by information we’ve recently been exposed to, even when it has nothing to do
with what we’re deciding.
Put yourself in the shoes of visitors at the San Francisco Exploratorium, who
were asked to estimate the height of the tallest redwood tree in the world. First,
some visitors were asked whether it was “more or less than 85 feet tall”; others
were asked whether it was “more or less than 1,000 feet tall.” That was a warm-
up question. Then they were asked to estimate its actual height. On average,
volunteers exposed to the smaller initial number (85 feet) guessed that the tallest
tree in the world was 118 feet high. In the group exposed to the higher number
(1,000 feet), their estimates were fully seven times higher.
3
 The visitors thought
they were being objective, but their brains had latched onto that first number as a

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guide. This phenomenon is called 
anchoring.
It occurs when our automatic
brains don’t bother drifting too far from an initial suggestion, like a ship tethered
by an anchor.
We can be susceptible to this kind of influence even when the initial
anchoring information is plainly irrelevant. In a well-known experiment, Duke
behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely asked people to recall the last two
digits of their Social Security number, and then to bid on a number of products
that he offered for sale: a book, some chocolates, IT equipment, and wine.
Within each bidding round, there was a significant correlation between those
who wrote down higher Social Security digits and those who made higher bids.
4
It makes no sense. But those two irrelevant digits were fresh enough in mind for
people’s automatic systems to grab the cue and make use of it.
The effect extends into non-numerical situations, too. 
Recency bias
describes
the way that we’re disproportionately influenced by anything that has just
happened, saving our deliberate system from the harder work of looking back
over time and working out longer-term patterns. It’s why for every 20-degree
increase in a day’s temperature, researchers found that car dealers sell 8.5
percent more convertibles.
5
“It’s been sunny in the last few hours, so a
convertible is the right investment for me,” goes the logic of your shortsighted
automatic system.