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Registration

Field Before After
Last Published July 24, 2025 04:07 AM March 10, 2026 04:52 AM
Study Withdrawn No
Intervention Completion Date July 08, 2024
Data Collection Complete Yes
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) 1459 participants
Was attrition correlated with treatment status? No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations 1459 participants
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms Approximately 150 participants per treatment arm (see the published paper for details.)
Public Data URL https://osf.io/d47qm/
Is there a restricted access data set available on request? No
Program Files Yes
Program Files URL https://osf.io/d47qm/
Data Collection Completion Date July 08, 2024
Is data available for public use? Yes
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Papers

Field Before After
Paper Abstract We investigate how the anchoring effect—a well-established cognitive bias—influences subjective belief distributions. While prior research extensively examines the impact of anchoring and other biases on point estimates, their effect on the underlying distribution and its higher moments remains unexplored. Using two pre-registered online experiments (N = 1467) and two elicitation methods, we find that anchoring impacts not just the mean, but also higher moments of belief distributions. Notably, the traditional anchoring effect in means diminishes when eliciting distributions rather than point estimates. We also find that the elicitation method matters: inattentive participants generate spiky distributions when manually entering numbers for many bins, whereas they generate flat distributions using a click-and-drag interface. These findings show that cognitive biases can extend beyond point estimates, and that the elicitation technique may impact results especially among inattentive participants.
Paper Citation Håkan J. Holm, Margaret Samahita, Roel van Veldhuizen, Erik Wengström, Anchoring and subjective belief distributions, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 240, 2025, 107304, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107304. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125004214)
Paper URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107304
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