After the Crash by Orhan Erdem

Author:Orhan Erdem
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030433437
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

b.No less than 35 million

2.Write your estimate of the exact population of Singapore here:…………………

Singapore is a small country in Southeast Asia. It is very probable for you not to know the answer to these questions and you probably made a guess. That is the point where the trick comes into play. How did you make your guess? A hypothesis says that your decision was affected by the previous reference point. I used the number 35 million in the first part to influence you and manipulate your answer in the second part. Whichever answer you chose for the first question, your eyes transferred the number 35 million to your brain, which holds on to the number for a short period. This saved information/image affects, sometimes contaminates, your subsequent decisions or ideas. So your guess will probably be affected by this saved image, which is called an anchor. If I had directly asked you, the population of Singapore, without the anchoring question, your answer would be probably closer to the true population, which is about 5½ million. Anchoring, in simple terms, is to give too much weight to the first piece of information (in this case, a number) presented in a discussion and then unintentionally use this as a reference point (the anchor) to make further adjustments.

Our everyday life is full of similar anchors. Newspapers, social media, and TV channels. The effect of social media in the past decade is growing faster than conventional media, which in turn makes it a better anchoring tool than others. Most politicians, managers, opinion-leaders are effectively using it to anchor our brains. So, it is not an exaggeration to say that the feeds in social media are designed to affect our decisions on anything. They aim to affect our political, social and, economic decisions. Advancing technology gave way to tailor-made anchoring. Using the browsing, search history, and the thumbs-up likes of internet users, most tech companies are forming behavioral models that map each person’s personality and habits. These models are so powerful, they may even predict your judgments better than your close friends may (Youyou et al. 2015). And this phenomenon does not still take place in economic theory, which makes the predictions erroneous. A recent study shows that computer predictions based on digital footprints (Facebook likes) are more accurate than those made by the participants’ Facebook friends. Therefore, models based on digital fingerprints can easily be used to manipulate people’s ideas, opinions, and decisions. The emails, text messages, and popups saying “you may also like” are of this kind. Though they may be of great help for your future shopping, they can also be used for malicious purposes. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018 constitutes a good example of this modern version of anchoring. The company was accused of acquiring the data of 50 million Facebook users, without their permission, and letting Donald Trump’s team to use this data in the 2016 presidential campaign. In Britain, they face investigations for a possible illegal job they might have performed on the “Brexit” campaign, too.

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