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Trapped by a first hypothesis: How rudeness leads to anchoring.
Binyamin Cooper1, Christopher R Giordano2, Amir Erez3
1Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.
The Journal of Applied Psychology
|June 10, 2021
Summary
Rudeness increases cognitive anchoring bias by causing negative arousal. This effect can be reduced by encouraging perspective-taking and information elaboration, mitigating the impact of rudeness on judgment.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Anchoring is a pervasive cognitive bias where initial information unduly influences subsequent judgments.
- Rudeness is a common social interaction that can evoke negative emotional and cognitive responses.
- Existing research has not fully explored the link between experiencing rudeness and cognitive biases like anchoring.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of encountering rudeness on the tendency to engage in anchoring.
- To examine the mediating role of negative arousal in the rudeness-anchoring relationship.
- To test the moderating effects of perspective-taking and information elaboration on this relationship.
Main Methods:
- Four experimental studies were conducted, including a pilot study, with tasks involving medical diagnosis, general judgment, and negotiation.
- Participants were exposed to varying conditions of rudeness or politeness.
- Measures included self-reported negative arousal, perspective-taking, information elaboration, and anchoring task performance.
Main Results:
- Exposure to rudeness significantly increased anchoring bias across different tasks.
- Negative arousal mediated the relationship between rudeness and anchoring.
- Perspective-taking and information elaboration effectively mitigated the negative effects of rudeness on anchoring.
Conclusions:
- Experiencing rudeness can impair judgment by increasing reliance on anchoring due to heightened negative arousal.
- Cognitive strategies such as perspective-taking and thorough information elaboration can serve as crucial buffers against the biasing effects of rudeness.
- Findings have implications for understanding decision-making in social and professional contexts where rudeness may occur.
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