One swallow doesn’t make a summer: new evidence on anchoring effects

By Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, John A. List. 2014

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some researchers have argued that anchoring in economic valuations casts doubt on the assumption of consistent and stable preferences. We present new evidence that explores the strength of certain anchoring results. We then present a theoretical framework that provides insights into why we should be cautious of initial empirical findings in general. The model importantly highlights that the rate of false positives depends not only on the observed significance level, but also on statistical power, research priors, and the number of scholars exploring the question. Importantly, a few independent replications dramatically increase the chances that the original finding is true.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87e8e8d9862d25bf00e4d8fce0e6486028c04037

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In General Decision Sciences

Citations in the corpus

Avoiding the Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving (2017, unknown): “Finally, recent work on the reliability of “positive results” has highlighted the importance of using related literature to form priors and conducting independent replications (Doyen et al. 2012; Open Science Collaboration 2012; Maniadis, Tufano, and List 2014).”
What Can We Learn from Experiments? Understanding the Threats to the Scalability of Experimental Results (2017, background): “In the case of the abstract inferential problem considered by Maniadis et al. (2014), there is the solution of replication described above.”
The Behavioralist as Tax Collector: Using Natural Field Experiments to Enhance Tax Compliance (2017, result): “We also replicate the minority norm finding from the first experiment, which significantly increases the reliability of our results (Maniadis et al., 2014).”
Reflections on the replication corner: In praise of conceptual replications (2015, background): “Maniadis, Tufano, and List (2014) declare a failure to replicate Ariely, Loewenstein, and Prelec's (2003) findings of anchoring effects on valuations of goods and experiences.”
Non est Disputandum de Generalizability? A Glimpse into The External Validity Trial (2020, background): “should be placed on evidence based on multiple studies (see, e.g., Ioannides, 2005; Maniadis et al., 2014; Dreber et al., 2015).”