Anchoring Bias: It started with a cookie.
This week I watched my two boys arguing over a cookie. One of them grabbed a big one from the plate and said, “This is mine.” The other was mad, not because he didn’t have a cookie, but because his was smaller. So, I broke the cookies in half, giving them both a piece of each. I thought this genius move would solve the problem…
It did not.
Now the complaint was: “That’s not fair, his was bigger before.”
And that’s the interesting part. Even though they ended up with the same amount, they couldn’t get past what they saw first. That first cookie became the reference point. The anchor.
We do this all the time just in quieter, more grown-up ways. We anchor to the first price we see, the first expectation we form, or even the first story we tell ourselves about something. And once that anchor is set, everything else gets judged against it. Even when the situation changes. Even when the new information is more relevant.
I see this show up in client conversations more often than you might think.
Sometimes it’s a number people can’t shake. Sometimes it’s a past experience that still feels like the “right” baseline. Sometimes it’s simply the first impression that sticks a little too well.
And just like with the cookies, the challenge isn’t the situation itself, it’s the comparison we keep going back to. The tricky part about anchoring bias is that it feels logical. Of course we compare things. Of course we use reference points. But the first reference point isn’t always the best one.
When we are thinking about our financial health, and something feels a bit off, it can be helpful to ask ourselves, compared to what. Because sometimes, we don’t realise that we are anchoring our beliefs on an initial thought or idea or number, which many times is no longer the best one for us.