It's fascinating to watch the rituals professional athletes go through to cope with the unbelievably weird situation they find themselves in.

They have to perform precise physical actions, demanding great concentration, all with millions of people watching them, both right there, and on TV.

For those who have never played in front of a crowd, it's like the difference between having a relaxed conversation with a friend and giving a speech to thousands of people, multiplied by ten.

So, anything athletes can do to improve their performance in response to the huge amount of pressure they are under, is worth a try.

Things like deep breathing, going through particular routines and using visualisation can all help, but now there's a new trick to add to the book.

To test it out, Beckmann et al. (2013) had footballers, Taekwondo practitioners and badminton players try something new when they were under pressure. They were told to squeeze their left hands tight into a fist and hold it for 30 seconds.

What happened was that when they were under pressure and they squeezed their fists, they didn't choke. Instead of dipping, their performance remained at its usual level.

The researchers explain this boost by saying that squeezing your left fist boosts right-brain activity (the left side of your body is broadly associated with the right-hand-side of the brain). The right brain has, they say, more control over highly practised, automatic, skilled performance, which is what we rely on under pressure.

But perhaps you think you've spotted a flaw in the experiment? Maybe the athletes were responding to the suggestion that, if they made a fist, they would play better. If so, this explanation is bunk and it's all about the power of suggestion.

The researchers, however, tested that out by having the athletes try squeezing their right hand into a fist in stressful moments. When they did this, they tended to choke. So it does seem it's something about squeezing the left hand.

If you're still sceptical that such a simple action could prevent choking then I'm with you.

The explanation they provide is not watertight and the experimenters weren't blinded to the experiment, so perhaps it was all about the power of suggestion after all. Only further research will tell us which.

Still, worth a try isn't it?

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Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

"You think you have a memory; but it has you!" —John Irving.

Irving's quote nicely captures our hunch that we are slaves to our memories. Will I recall someone's name? What moment from my past will come back to delight, perplex or daunt me? And at other times we ask ourselves why we seem unable to forget.

These uncertainties prompt many people to say their memory is awful, a comment distinguished memory researcher Professor Alan Baddeley hears all the time. But be fair, he argues:

"I have a good memory and would argue, despite its occasionally embarrassing fallibility, that both my memory and yours exceed that of the best computer in terms of capacity, flexibility, and durability." (Baddeley, 1999)

At times it may not feel like it and that's partly because human memory follows its own rules, not the ones we imagine or prefer. To help us use our memories more effectively we need a better understanding of how it really works so that, hopefully, we can forgive its eccentricities.

Here are 20 of my favourite articles on the mysteries of memory, culled from PsyBlog's archives:

1. How Memory Works: 10 Things Most People Get Wrong - "If we remembered everything we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing." —William James
2. Why People’s Names Are So Hard to Remember - Why people's names are more difficult to remember than their jobs, hobbies or home towns.
3. How Memories are Distorted and Invented: Misattribution - One evening in 1975 an unsuspecting Australian psychologist, Donald M. Thomson, walked into a television studio to discuss the psychology of eyewitness testimony, little did he know...
4. Memory Improved 20% by Nature Walk - Short-term memory is improved 20% by walking in nature, or even just by looking at an image of a natural scene.
5. Absent-Mindedness: A Blessing in Disguise? - The benefits of forgetting.
6. Mind Pops: Memories That Come From Nowhere  - Cheese grater. Why do odd images suddenly pop into your head for no reason?
7. How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory - How recall fades over time.
8. Reconstructing the Past: How Recalling Memories Alters Them - Experiment shows both the enhancing and distorting effects of recall on the original memories.
9. Can Doodling Improve Memory and Concentration? - Doodling may be more than just a pleasant waste of time and paper.
10. On the Tip-of-the-Tongue: Blocked Memories - College students have one or two 'tip-of-the-tongue' moments a week, while older adults have between two to four per week.
11. Six Memory Myths - Can flashbulb memories be distorted? Some of the most widespread beliefs about memory are plain wrong.
12. Memory Improved By Saying Words Aloud - Memory can be improved by vocalising or sub-vocalising words.
13. Infant Memory Works From Very Early - Some argue it's impossible for us to remember anything much from before around two to four years of age—but is that true?
14. Memories Are Made of This - Study records the activation of human brain cells deep inside the living brain as memories are formed and recalled.
15. Memory Enhanced by a Simple Break After Reading - If you find it difficult to remember what you've read, try giving the memory time to consolidate.
16. The Persistence of Memory - Being unable to forget is a double-edged sword.
17. 7 Simple Ways to Improve Your Memory Without Any Training - Boost your memory by writing about your problems, predicting your performance and more...
18. How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories - What were your political views a decade ago? How good was your relationship last year? Studies show we often assume things haven't changed, when in fact they have.
19. The Temporal Doppler Effect: Why The Future Feels Closer Than The Past - Like the sound of a passing ambulance siren, our perception of time distorts as it shoots by.
20. Implanting False Memories: Lost in the Mall & Paul Ingram - "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is that you think you remember?" -- Elizabeth Loftus

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Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

It's not often that anyone talks about the benefits of low self-control. That's because usually low self-control has bad consequences: over-eating, over-spending under-exercising and the rest.

That said, there are some circumstances in which being in a weakened state can be good news for our diets, our health or even our credit cards.

These arise out of the way that habits work. Typically we perform habits automatically and unconsciously.

Let's say you've got a long-established habit of going to the gym before work or of practising the piano in the evening.

But, one morning, after a bad night's sleep, you feel mentally weak when you get up, then after a gruelling day at work you return home with your mental energy badly depleted. What will happen to the gym and piano practise?

You might imagine that when self-control is weak, as it will be in these situations, you're more likely to give up on relatively demanding tasks and have a lie-in or watch some TV.

But that's where the twist comes in. Because established habits tend to activate automatically, the exact reverse is true. Tiredness and low self-control actually make established routines more likely to be followed. It takes a mental effort not to follow your usual routine. So, when your self-control is low, you are actually more likely to get to the gym or practise the piano (so long as both are well-established habits).

Sounds unlikely?

A brand new psychology paper demonstrates exactly this pattern in a series of 5 studies (Neal et al., 2013). When people in these studies were feeling weak, they were more likely to perform strong habits in the same situations.

In other words, all things being equal, if the gym-habit was strong, they were more likely to go to the gym when their self-control was low.

The down-side of how habits work is that, just like good habits, bad habits are also more likely to be performed when our self-control is low. Until new, strong, improved habits are formed, we are at the mercy of our self-control to keep us on the straight-and-narrow.

Once established, though, strong habits repay the effort made to build them up many times over. So try to build up good routines that are activated by regular situations that you are in. Strong habits have the power to pull us through in difficult moments, even when we don't feel like performing them.

→ To find out more about how to build strong habits, check out my book 'Making Habits, Breaking Habits'.

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Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

Not long ago I reported on a study which found that guitar cases have considerable power over women when they are asked on a date.

The French psychologist who conducted that study, Nicolas Gueguen, has been up to his old tricks again on the Atlantic Coast of France.

In a new experiment, reported in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, he had some women lying on a beach, face-down, reading a book (Gueguen, 2013). Sometimes they displayed a 10cm x 5cm temporary tattoo of a butterfly on their lower backs and sometimes not.

Then another research assistant counted how many times a man came up to them and tried to start a conversation.

Without a tattoo they were approached 10% of the time, but with the tattoo this shot up to 24%. Not only that but the tattoo increased the speed with which men approached from 35 minutes up to 24 minutes.

I will pass no judgement on the rights or wrongs of tattoos, the types of men that might have been approaching or anything else, but simply leave this for you to interpret as you will.

Oh wait; one final fact does need mentioning. When men were asked to evaluate the women with or without the tattoo, they judged that the women with tattoos were more likely to say yes to their advances and were probably more promiscuous.

Whether or not either of these assumptions is actually true is a totally different matter. It may well be that men misinterpret tattoos and/or that women don't realise how men perceive them.

OK, now discuss.

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Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

In an uncertain world, people love to be right because it helps us make sense of things. Indeed some psychologists think it's akin to a basic drive.

One of the ways they strive to be correct is by looking for evidence that confirms they are correct, sometimes with depressing or comic results:

• A woman hires a worker that turns out to be incompetent. She doesn't notice that everyone else is doing his work for him because she is so impressed that he shows up every day, right on time.
• A sports fan who believes his team is the best only seems to remember the matches they won and none of the embarrassing defeats to inferior opponents.
• A man who loves the country life, but has to move to the city for a new job, ignores the flight-path he lives under and noisy-neighbours-from-hell and tells you how much he enjoys the farmer's market and tending his window box.

We do it automatically, usually without realising. We do it partly because it's easier to see where new pieces fit into the picture-puzzle we are working on, rather than imagining a new picture. It also helps shore up our vision of ourselves as accurate, right-thinking, consistent people who know what's what.

Psychologists call it the confirmation bias and it creeps into all sorts of areas of our lives. Here are a few examples:

 1. Self-image

"Hey, you look great, have you done something different with your hair?"

Who doesn't like a compliment? No one. It doesn't even have to be sincerely delivered, I'll take it. But what about...

"Hey, you're a real slime-ball, you know that?"

Who likes insults? Well, we don't exactly like them but—believe it or not—sometimes we seek them out if they confirm our view of ourselves.

In a study that examined this, people actually sought out information confirming their own view that they were—not exactly slime-balls—but lazy, or slow-witted or not very athletic (Swann et al., 1989).

And this isn't some kind of self-hating thing; in this study even people with high self-esteem sought out information that confirmed their own negative self-views.

It seems we like to be right, even at a cost to our self-image.

2. Finance

A study of online stock market investors has looked at how they gathered information about a prospective stock (Park et al., 2010).

The researchers found the confirmation bias writ large. Investors mostly looked for information that confirmed their hunch about a particular stock. Those people who displayed the strongest confirmation bias were the most over-confident investors and consequently made the least money.

It seems we like to be right, even if it costs us money.

3. Politics

People see what they want to see in politics all the time.

The most ironic example is in satire. Often satire uses sarcasm to make its point: TV satirist Stephen Colbert frequently says the opposite of what he really thinks to make his point (amongst comedians I believe these are called 'jokes').

Except the irony is that one study has shown that people who don't agree with Colbert don't get that he's being sarcastic, they think he really means it (LaMarre, 2009).

The beauty is that both liberals and conservatives get what they want: their viewpoints confirmed.

It seems we like to be right, even if it means not getting the joke.

Blame it on the bias

Over the years the confirmation bias has picked up the blame for all sorts of dodgy beliefs. Here are a few:

• People are prejudiced (partly) because they only notice facts which fit with their preconceived notions about other nations or ethnicities.
• People believe weird stuff about flying saucers, the JFK assassination, astrology, Egyptian pyramids and the moon landings because they only look for confirmation not dis-confirmation.
• In the early nineteenth century doctors treated any old disease with blood-letting. Their patients sometimes got better so doctors—who conveniently ignored all the people who died—figured it must be doing something. In fact for many ailments some people will always get better on their own without any treatment at all.

Fight the bias

The way to fight the confirmation bias is simple to state but hard to put into practice.

You have to try and think up and test out alternative hypothesis. Sounds easy, but it's not in our nature. It's no fun thinking about why we might be misguided or have been misinformed. It takes a bit of effort.

It's distasteful reading a book which challenges our political beliefs, or considering criticisms of our favourite film or, even, accepting how different people choose to live their lives.

Trying to be just a little bit more open is part of the challenge that the confirmation bias sets us. Can we entertain those doubts for just a little longer? Can we even let the facts sway us and perform that most fantastical of feats: changing our minds?

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Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

Roughly speaking there are only two reasons you do anything in life:

1. Because you want to.
2. Because someone else wants you to.

The first category of internally motivated activities might include things like eating, socialising, hobbies and going on holiday. The second category of externally motivated activities might include working a job, studying, or loading the dishwasher.

The reason I say 'roughly speaking' and 'might include' is because the two types of motivation can be difficult to disentangle. Yes, you enjoy your work, but would you do it for less money or for free? Maybe, maybe not. Yes, my wife wants me to load the dishwasher, but maybe I'd do it anyway. Or maybe not.

Turning work into play

And one type of motivation can slowly morph into another over time. For example, things originally we did for their own sake can become a chore once we are paid for them. More hearteningly, sometimes things we once did just for the money can become intrinsically motivated.

This latter, magical transformation is most fascinating and probably happens because the activity satisfies one or all of three basic human needs. As the eminent motivation researchers, Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, say, it's these three factors that are at the core of intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000):

1. Competence. We want to be good at something. Things that are too easy, though, don't give us a sense of competence; it has to be just hard enough.
2. Autonomy. We want to be free and dislike being controlled. When people have some freedom—even within certain non-negotiable boundaries—they are more likely to thrive.
3. Relatedness. As social animals we want to feel connected to other people.

Look for these in any activity if you want to harness the power of self-guiding, internal motivation.

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→ If you value PsyBlog, please support it by spreading it to others through email, social networks or even old-fashioned talking! Thank you!

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

Emotions aren't just things that happen to us, they are vital components of how we reason, motivate ourselves, think about the past and future and how we communicate with others.

Our emotional selves are sometimes remarkably resilient, sometimes out of control and often difficult to understand. Good feelings inevitably fade, while negative ones can stay with us forever.

To help explore your emotional side, here is my top 10 pick of articles from PsyBlog on the psychology of emotions:

1. Does Keeping Busy Make Us Happy? - People dread being bored and will do almost anything to keep busy, but does keeping busy really make us happy?
2. The Upside of Anger: 6 Psychological Benefits of Getting Mad - We tend to think of anger as a wild, negative emotion, but research finds that anger also has its positive side.
3. 12 Laws of the Emotions - Emotions follow their own rules, like that of situational meaning, habituation, closure and concern.
4. The Psychological Immune System - We get over bad moods much sooner than we predict, thanks to the covert work of the psychological immune system.
5. What “The Love Bridge” Tells Us About How Thoughts and Emotions Interact - How much control do you have over your emotions?
6. The Power of Regret to Shape Our Future - Why people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, but will happily exchange pens.
7. 4 Ways Benign Envy is Good For You - Feeling green with envy? If it's the right type of envy, maybe it's no bad thing...
8. Duchenne: Key to a Genuine Smile? - Experiments cast doubt on the classic marker of a genuine smile.
9. The Surprising Power of an Emotional ‘Memory Palace’ - Can a 'memory palace' help you recall happier times, even when life is hard?
10. 4 Life-Savouring Strategies: Which Ones Work Best? - We can increase our positive emotions and life satisfaction by using the right mix of savouring strategies.

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→ If you value PsyBlog, please support it by spreading it to others through email, social networks or even old-fashioned talking! Thank you!

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

One of the mind's great talents is to simulate events that haven't happened. Projected into the future, our imaginative power helps us plan everything from our weekends to the construction of our homes and cities.

But when our minds turn towards the past, our ability to simulate alternative realities seems less useful. What use is it to imagine how things could have been? Do we not learn more from our pasts by analysing the reasons for either success or failure?

A recent study by Kray et al. (2010), though, demonstrates a role for thinking about what might have been that doesn't invoke that horrible word: regret.

Instead they wonder if thinking about what might have been actually helps us make more sense of our lives.

In the first of four studies they had students think about the sequence of events that had led them to attend that particular college. Half the participants then wrote about all the things that could have gone differently. Finally, everyone completed measures of meaning and significance of events in their lives.

The results showed that those who had considered counter-factuals—how their lives might have been different—gave higher ratings to the significance of their choice to attend that particular college and to how meaningful this was in their lives.

Psychologically, then, thinking about how life could have been different, made people feel that what did actually happen was more special in comparison.

In three mores studies they confirmed this finding and looked at what mechanisms connected counter-factual thinking with meaning-making. Two emerged:

1. Fate. Thinking about what might have been makes us feel that major events in our lives were 'fated'. This is because counter-factuals make you more aware of all the other things that could have happened.
2. Finding the upside. When people thought about counter-factuals, they noticed more positive aspects to the true chain of events. Many people were even able to find the upside of apparently negative events (things like: "If I hadn't broken my leg, I wouldn't have met my husband").

As Kray et al. conclude:

"Mentally veering off the path of reality, only briefly and imaginatively, forges key connections between what might have been and what was meant to be, thereby injecting our experiences and relationships with deeper meaning and significance."

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→ If you value PsyBlog, please support it by spreading it to others through email, social networks or even old-fashioned talking! Thank you!

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

What runs through your mind when someone tries to persuade you?

Say they start telling you about their preferred make of car, the right area to live in or why you should vote this way or that.

How do you react?

And what if you are actively trying to persuade other people; do you know what is going on in their heads? What internal mechanisms are swinging into action as you start to try and convince them?

Here are the top 9 ways that the mind resists persuasion and how to both break them down or sustain them.

1. Inoculation

Medical inoculations work by giving you a little of the disease so that your body can get used to it and fend off a full attack in the future. Psychological inoculations against persuasion work the same way.

When people have already been prepared with counter-arguments they find it easier to fend of persuasion attempts.

• When persuading: what counter-argument will people already know? Avoid the 'usual' arguments in your persuasion attempt. Instead use a new angle they haven't thought about before.

• When resisting persuasion: expose yourself to different types of arguments and counter-arguments you will likely face. When you know what's coming it's easier to defend yourself psychologically. Look for indirect persuasion attempts: perhaps it's the same old argument made in a slightly different way.

2. Forewarned is forearmed

When we can see the persuasion attempt coming, it's much easier to marshal our defences. Blatant advertising, party political broadcasts and the rest: our defences are up so it's harder to get through.

• When persuading: don't signal your attempt in advance. Try to divert attention from the persuasion attempt by hiding it within an apparently innocuous message. Emphasise how you are 'just talking' or 'only discussing' something.

• When resisting persuasion: try to spot persuasion attempts that are wrapped up in social pressure or as entertainment. For example: "A little won't hurt. Come on, we're all doing it!" or: "Find out more about [insert politician here]'s secret love child! Tonight on [insert TV network here]".

3. Reactance

People don't like being told what to do or having their freedom restricted. It can even lead to a 'boomerang effect' where telling people not to do something makes them want to do it more.

• When persuading: avoid restricting people's freedom; instead make them feel they have options and room for manoeuvre and this can work to your advantage (see: affirming the right to choose).

• When resisting persuasion: think about whether the persuasion attempt is restricting your freedom. If it is then should you go along with it? Alternatively, is the person emphasising how free you are in order to persuade you?

4. Reality check

After being persuaded, people often perform a sort of reality check. Have I agreed to something I didn't mean to? Would I have agreed if I knew then what I know now? If not, then cancel the whole thing!

• When persuading: don't give people the time for a reality check. Under time pressure people find it difficult to think.

• When resisting persuasion: take a time-out afterwards to think about whether you would still agree to it. Watch out for time pressure or limited deals—these are designed to short-cut rational processes and make us jump right in.

5. Counter-arguing and bolstering

It's the most natural defence of all: thinking about why they are wrong (counter-arguing) and you are right (bolstering).

• When persuading: strongly held beliefs are difficult to attack. Try being sneaky and sidestepping them. Minimise your point to make it less threatening or make the relationship seem more collaborative ("Hey, I'm just trying to work out the truth as much as you buddy.")

• When resisting persuasion: think about who else agrees with you. This bolsters your position by using social confirmation. Be wary of camouflaged attempts to persuade.

6. Resistance breeds more resistance

When people successfully defend themselves against an attempt at persuasion, their original position gets stronger. Say I'm trying to talk you into dying your hair blue and you think you'll look ridiculous. Unless I put forward a better case than, "Because it'll be funny", you'll be even more against it afterwards.

• When persuading: make your first attempt to persuade a strong one, don't go in half-hearted or you could just increase resistance in the long-run.

• When resisting persuasion: if you know the persuasion attempt is coming and you have counter-arguments ready then your resistance will only make you stronger.

7. Attack authority

Persuasion attempts often use the argument from authority, kind of like: "I'm your father so I know best." But like any child, we want to rebel so we attack authority.

• When persuading: make sure your credentials are rock-solid. If they're not, find someone whose authority is unquestioned. People naturally defer to those who have (or appear to have) authority.

• When resisting persuasion: attack the source of the message. Use negative emotions like anger or irritation and attribute them to the so-called authority figure. Be extremely suspicious of anyone who relies purely on authority to influence.

8. Being sharp and alert

Resistance is easiest when we feel sharp and alert. That's when you are better able to raise counter-arguments, sustain your position, spot persuasion attempts coming and so on.

• When persuading: when people are tired, their defences are down. If they are alert now, can they be worn down or their resistance blunted by a frontal attack? And, can you reduce their motivation to resist?

• When resisting persuasion: beware tiredness. Never go shopping when you're really hungry, buy a car when you're desperate or talk to a salesman when you're half-distracted. Recognise times when you're likely to be weak and closet yourself until the energy levels are replenished.

9. Not listening

Sometimes the easiest ways of resisting persuasion are the simplest. You walk away, turn off the TV or block out the drone of other people's point of view by humming the theme to The A-Team.

• When persuading: do you have their full attention? If not, then it's hard to be effective. Once they are focused on you, start with the most interesting part of the argument to draw them in.

• When resisting persuasion: are you really ignoring it? We are more easily swayed than we think. Most guess that it's other people who are influenced by adverts or political messages, not ourselves. Don't just turn it down, turn it off.

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→ If you value PsyBlog, please support it by spreading it to others through email, social networks or even old-fashioned talking! Thank you!

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

To illustrate the anchoring effect, let's say I ask you how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died.

For half of you I'll preface the question by saying: "Did he die before or after the age of 9?" For the other half I'll say: "Did he die before or after the age of 140?"

Obviously these are not very helpful statements. Anyone who has any clue who Gandhi was will know that he was definitely older than 9; while the oldest person who ever lived was 122. So why bother making these apparently stupid statements?

Because, according to the results of a study conducted by Strack and Mussweiler (1999), these initial statements, despite being unhelpful, affect the estimates people make.

In their experiment, the first group guessed an average age of 50 and the second, 67.

Neither was that close, he was actually assassinated at 87; but you can still see the effect of the initial number.

The anchor state

These might seem like silly little experiments that psychologists do to try and suggest that people are idiots, but actually it's showing us something fundamental about the way we think. It's so basic to how we experience the world that we often don't notice it.

We have a tendency to use anchors or reference points to make decisions and evaluations, and sometimes these lead us astray.

This sort of things is going on in loads of different areas of our lives. Take the emotions for starters. Psychologists have found it can be difficult to predict our future emotions and one reason is that we are anchored in how we feel right now.

That's why people who have just had lunch feel like they'll never be hungry again; compared with those who haven't, who don't display the same short-sightedness (I have described the relevant study in the context of the projection bias).

Real estate agents, car sellers or negotiators will be nodding their heads. That's because anchors are vital in all these lines of work, and many more. The initial price you set for the car, house or, more abstractly, for a deal of some kind, tends to have ramifications right through the process of coming to an agreement. Whether we like it or not, our minds keep referring back to that initial number.

That doesn't mean you just set the highest possible price you can get away with (although in reality that's often what is done). In real life things are more complicated than the Gandhi experiment. People usually have a choice about which house or car to buy or which deal to take and they can always walk away.

Still, there's a good reason sticker prices on car forecourts are mostly so high.

You can see the same effect in salary negotiations. There's some evidence that when the initial anchor figure is set high, the final negotiated amount will usually be higher (Thorsteinson, 2011).

Incidentally, the anchoring effect is another reason that you should open negotiations rather than waiting for the employer to tell you the range: because then you can set the anchor higher (more on this in: Ten Powerful Steps to Negotiating a Higher Salary).

Looking for confirmation

Since the anchoring effect occurs in so many situations, no one theory has satisfactorily explained it. There is, though, a modern favourite for explaining the anchoring effect in decision-making. It is thought to stem from our tendency to look for confirmation of things we are unsure of.

So, if I'm told the price of a particular diamond ring is £5,000, I'll tend to search around looking for evidence that confirms this. In this case it's easy: plenty of diamond rings cost about that, no matter the value of this particular ring. For all I know about diamond rings it could be worth £500 or £50,000.

The problem is that this explanation is less satisfying when the anchor is so manifestly unhelpful, like when you tell people that Gandhi was older than nine when he died.

Perhaps, then, it's all down to our fundamental laziness. When given the Gandhi example we can't be bothered to make the massive adjustment from the anchor we're given up to the real value, so we go some way and then stop.

How to avoid the anchoring effect

Whatever the reason for it, the anchoring effect is everywhere and can be difficult to avoid. That's especially true when we are deciding what to pay for stuff since we are overly influenced by the price that's been set.

One way of avoiding this bias—whether it's emotional or in decision-making—is by trying to wriggle free from the anchor state.

This can be done by thinking about other comparisons. That's what we're doing when we comparison shop: getting some new price anchors. In the realm of the emotions it might mean trying to compare with other emotional states, not just how you feel right now (creating a 'memory palace' for reference emotions may help with this). When negotiating it might mean thinking about what the other options are (negotiation theorists call this the 'BATNA': the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement).

Alternatively, for nullifying the anchoring effect in decision-making, find out more about the area: experts are less susceptible to it.

There's little doubt it's hard, though: some studies suggest that even when you know about it and are forewarned, the anchoring effect can still affect our judgements. It just shows the power that first piece of information can have on how we make decisions.

Image credit: Hey.Pictrues

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