Two experiments addressed relations between judgmental processes and action by examining both the impact of the anchoring/adjustment heuristic on judgments of performance capabilities and the subsequent impact of these self-efficacy judgments on behavior. In the first experiment, 62 undergraduates judged their capabilities for performance on a problem-solving task after exposure to ostensibly random anchor values representing either high or low levels of performance. Students in a control condition received no anchor values. Anchoring biases strongly affected self-efficacy judgments. High-anchor Students evidenced the highest judgments of their capabilities and Low-anchor Students the lowest judgments. Students then performed the task. Differences in task persistence paralleled the differences in self-efficacy judgments, with High-anchor Students displaying the highest level of task persistence. The second experiment, conducted with 23 high school students, replicated these results. In both studies, self-efficacy was predictive of both between-group differences and variations in performance within the anchoring conditions. Findings indicate that anchoring significantly affected judgments of self-efficacy.

Editor's Note: Anchoring bias is a type of judgmental heuristic that reduces complex inferential tasks to simpler cognitive operations. Also known as "focalism", the anchoring bias refers to the tendency to accept and rely on the first piece of information as the sole or primary foundation for making a decision.