Anchoring: The First Number You Hear Controls Everything After

Here's an experiment that should terrify anyone who negotiates for a living. Researchers spun a rigged roulette wheel that only landed on 10 or 65, then asked participants to guess what percentage of African countries belong to the United Nations. People who saw 65 guessed an average of 45%. People who saw 10 guessed 25%. A completely random number changed their "rational" estimate by 20 points.

This is anchoring bias — the first piece of information you encounter on a topic disproportionately shapes all subsequent judgments. Your brain doesn't evaluate numbers in a vacuum; it adjusts from whatever starting point it's given, and those adjustments are almost always insufficient.

This is why the first price on a menu is rarely the one they expect you to order — it's there to make everything else look reasonable. It's why salary negotiations favor whoever names a number first. And it's why real estate agents show you the overpriced house before the one they actually want to sell you.