Englich and Mussweiller:Anchoring bias and its effect of a judge's recommendations on male law students' decision-making regarding the sentencing of a criminal:Sample: law students, two groupsprocedure:--experience didn't have any influence on the law students decision, but the prosecutorsSample: 24 law studentsprocedure:-the researcher presented one group with a rape case-After reading through/forming an opinion about the case, the students were then given a questionnaire to determine an appropriate sentence to fit the crime-One group of students was given a prosecutor's recommendation for a 34-month sentence (high anchor condition) (wanted to give the prosecuters 28 months)-Other group: 2 months (low anchor condition) law students wanted to give 17 monthsRESULTS: there was an eight-month difference in the average sentence between the two groups.WHY it gives rise to anchoring bias in decision making:The study showed that when given the suggestion of 34 months, the students recommended on average a longer sentence. Since they would not have an absolute sense of how many months to punish the offender, they used the "anchor" that they were given to make their decision. This is an example of how a cognitive bias may affect one's behaviour.-as the participants based their personal opinions on the first piece of information given (without challenging their own perceptions), they used the more automatic, intuitive, and unreliable system 1 to process the information given, supporting the fact that they relied too heavily on the information they were provided with, then formed an opinion based on previous account. without weighing the justice of the claims - even the experienced judges unconsciously employed anchoring bias to the same extent as the law students, this suggests that anchoring bias manifests itself in all aspects of life. --as this case concerned the reprehensible act of rape, the participants may have been EMOTIONALLY affected by the type of crime, (unconsciously) allowing personal opinions, experiences, or relations to the issue affect their decisions--the study evokes cultural bias as the experiment was carried out in a WEIRD country (Germany), thereby limiting the findings to the European legal system and the societal context of the natio--Critical thinking: applicationsthe findings can be applied to the improvement of the legal system, hopefully enabling different judges to minimize the drastic difference in sentencing similar crimelimitations:-not GENERALIZABLE; study only had a sample of one gender and only used law students-The construct validity is also an issue because ANCHORING BIAS CANNOT BE FULLY MEASURED-has high ecological validity