The anchoring effect is a well-established phenomenon in psychology. It is a cognitive bias that causes an individual to rely too heavily on one piece of information, the anchor, when making decisions and forming judgments. Regardless of how arbitrary that piece of information is, an individual forms a bias that effects all following related information. The current study will investigate whether the anchoring effect can be reduced or even eliminated by using a novel manipulation, such as a frame of emotion. Participants will be recruited through Psychology subject pool. They will be asked to answer a series of simple math questions, followed by the framing questionnaire. The framing involves choices with negative or positive influences to statements probing individual’s characteristics and also what others perceive of those characteristics. The anchoring effect will then be assessed by asking a question with either a low or high anchor (for example, 17 and 63, for the correct answer of 40) to see whether the participant’s perception of their experience of the simple math questions is affected by the exposure to an emotional frame. Although it has not been determined through prior experiments exactly in what manner the framing will affect judgment, results reflect no influence on the perception of the situation, due to either negative or positive framing. However, the judgment of the person’s perception of the situation was consistent (and consistently high) throughout all conditions, regardless of how well their perception of the situation actually was. This will help further determine how emotion interacts with judgment and perception, while considering both the substance of the information and the emotional state of the individual engaging in memory formation
