Anchoring

Tendency for arbitrary starting numbers to pull numerical estimates toward them, even when flagged as irrelevant.

Specifications & Metrics

In Tversky and Kahneman's 1974 wheel demonstration, a rigged roulette number shifted United Nations membership estimates.
Anchors work even when openly random, when they exceed plausible answers, and in expert judgment.
Anchoring is among the most replicated results in judgment research, with hundreds of published demonstrations.