Does a Child's Opinion Counterweight That of an Adult Expert?

In our everyday life, we are constantly exposed to multiple pieces of information from different sources with varying degrees of relevance. It is therefore important to understand whether exposure to information from sources we know to be irrelevant can nevertheless influence us. This study examines this question through the lens of the anchoring effect (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) by analyzing how numbers provided by sources of varying relevance might influence numerical estimates. In this study, participants answered general knowledge questions after being exposed to either a relevant anchor (from an adult expert), an irrelevant anchor (from a preschooler), or both anchors in succession. The results show that the presence of two opposite anchors, in size and relevance, can reduce the anchoring effect when they are presented consecutively. We discuss the psychological processes underlying this phenomenon.