Fifty years of research on the anchoring effect. What news since Tversky and Kahneman (1974)?

In 1974, Tversky and Kahneman published an article that would have a major influence on the field of decision-making. These authors highlighted the fact that human reasoning often relies on the use of heuristics, effective mental shortcuts, with their negative counterpart: the existence of numerous cognitive biases. Among the cognitive biases that occur in decision making under uncertainty, the most famous is undoubtedly the anchoring effect. The robustness and ubiquity of this effect make it a fascinating phenomenon, which has led to an abundant literature since that first research. Where do we stand as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the anchoring effect? In this article, we provide a review of the literature published to date on this effect. We describe its main characteristics, the different explanatory theories of this phenomenon, and propose some research perspectives.