Accessibility‐Diagnosticity and the Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment Model

Abstract

I discuss how the Multiple Pathway Anchoring and Adjustment model is similar to and different from the Feldman and Lynch accessibility-diagnosticity model, elaborated as an anchoring and adjustment model by Lynch, Marmorstein, and Weigold. Cohen and Reed's concept of representational sufficiency embraces both attitude coherence and retrieval fluency; these map to prior operationalizations of diagnosticity in past accessibility-diagnosticity research. Cohen and Reed's functional sufficiency maps closely to Lynch et al.'s notion of a comparison of cumulative diagnosticity to a diagnosticity threshold in an anchoring and adjustment process. I identify differences between the two models and call for research to distinguish their predictions.