Judgmental anchoring constitutes an ubiquitous and robust phenomenon. Nevertheless, its underlying mechanisms remain somewhat mysterious. We discuss four accounts that attempt to explain anchoring effects: insufficient adjustment, conversational inferences and numeric priming seem to be insufficient to understand the phenomenon. As an alternative, we propose a Selective Accessibility model. Drawing on the notions of hypothesis-consistent testing and semantic priming, the model assumes that anchoring effects are mediated by the selectively increased accessibility of anchor-consistent knowledge. Tests of the model's basic assumptions are reported and its implications are discussed.
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