Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano, and John A. List, “One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer: New Evidence on Anchoring Effects.” American Economic Review 104(1): 277–290, 2014 [pdf of earlier version here].
• A 2003 article by Ariely, Loewenstein, and Prelec found huge anchoring effects in the willingness-to-pay for goods and the willingness-to-accept payment for listening to aversive sounds. These experiments, along with others, undermine the usual economics assumption of fixed preferences.
• Maniadis, Tufano, and List replicate parts of the earlier study and find some anchoring, but the effects are about ½ to ⅓ the size identified in the earlier article.
• The general conclusion on anchoring drawn by Maniadis, Tufano, and List: anchoring effects are real, but there is no evidence concerning their magnitude in economically important settings.
• Beware of interesting new findings! Statistical significance means little in isolation. Be a Bayesian: if the prior probability of a result is small, do not rush to accept it on the basis of one published study.
• The greater the number of independent researchers who are working on a specific finding, the lower the likelihood that a single publication identifying the finding is correct.
• Research and other biases also can enter the picture; for instance, journals might systematically be less interested in publishing non-findings than (statistically significant) findings.
• The replicability of a study is the key to inculcating rational belief. One or two independent replications tend to greatly add to the probability that a finding is correct. [It’s a movement!; see http://replicationnetwork.com/.]
• A potentially useful reference is Samuel Arbesman, The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know has an Expiration Date, Current, 2012.
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