A real " trending topic " in the fields of personal development and balanced management, is the concept of anchoring one of the soft skills of tomorrow ? Derived from the Latin ancora, which means anchor, anchoring seems to call on managers to " get wet " to guarantee a form of positioning in a moving environment.
The web magazine Eve wanted to know more and proposes to take a closer look at this notion evoking the ability to establish and establish oneself in a solid and lasting way... This is to the benefit of a certain rigor but also at the risk of rigidity.
Internal anchoring: a vital prerogative
In its figurative sense, anchoring refers to two concepts : the first is oriented towards our internal state with a view to personal development. It is a question of being " rooted " in one's environment, of knowing " where one lives ", to put it more trivially. When we are connected to our inner depths, our values and all our other identity components, we benefit from an inner stability that gives us a certain consistency in our external interactions. We are then in a state of calm conscience, confident about the place we occupy in the world.
When you lack anchorage, you feel like you're " in the west ". Not being clear about our intrapsychic positioning, we lack self-confidence, which is reflected externally : for example, we find it difficult to carry out our projects and/or to interact positively with others.
To unblock one's internal anchoring, several avenues are to be explored : meditation, yoga, mindfulness, artistic expression, sport are known to promote a state of detachment from mental activity to anchor oneself in one's body and position oneself in the present. The various forms of personal support, such as coaching among others, also help to establish one's internal anchoring.
External anchoring: a source of decision-making bias
The other meaning of anchoring refers to the difficulty we can experience in freeing ourselves from a first judgment. This external anchoring is a form of cognitive bias that results from the use of quick, intuitive, and automatic mental shortcuts that we use to mentally solve problems.
As the interpretation or solution we are going to formulate depends more on our frame of reference than on reality, which is far too complex to grasp, this anchoring bias leads to erroneous conclusions. For example, our stereotypes can anchor us unconsciously, which may lead us to self-censor and/or discriminate. even without intending to. In a social context, external anchoring is also an extremely powerful mechanism of influence.
External anchoring, an invisible influencer of our thoughts and decisions
The anchoring effect is all the more powerful when we do not have relevant information, because, as management science professor Jacques Rojot points out, " anchoring is based on available information." Thus, "any number that passes by risks anchoring us if we are totally uncertain of the value of an object".
The same goes for everything that resembles an argument of authority, i.e. arguments whose value depends more on the legitimacy granted to the person who makes it than on the content of the statement : we believe a priori that the scientist is decked out with diplomas and prestigious awards even if he addresses a subject of which he is not a specialist, We listen more carefully to the person who has a high status in society (by post-rationalizing the fact that if he has arrived there, it cannot be a coincidence, after all !), we let ourselves be impressed by the person reputed to be cultured or the one who shows good oratory skills (even if it means letting himself be bewitched by tribunes !)…
Look at what I show you and I'll tell you what you think
To fully understand how external anchoring influences us, let's refer to an experiment conducted by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Two groups of people were asked to estimate the number of African countries that are members of the UN. We are unlikely to know the answer... Before answering, the first group had waited in a room where a lottery wheel displayed the number 65, while for the second group the lottery displayed the number 10. Anchoring, when you hold us: the first group answered on average that there were 45 African countries that were members of the UN, while the second group estimated that there were 25 !
The anchoring effect can also be explained simply with the famous " what does the cow drink?" test. Ask someone in turn to tell you what color the (white) cup in front of them is, the (white) sheet of paper in their notebook, a colleague's (white) shirt, snow, yogurt, tissue, etc. Then ask the fatal question: what does the cow drink? In the majority of cases, those who have never taken the test answer : milk ! However, until further notice, the cows are drinking water.
Navigate to an internal anchor without being moored externally
The big question of anchoring lies in its ambiguity : how to establish one's internal stability without being rigid, how to open up to the outside world without being polluted by unconscious mechanisms of influence? To achieve a balanced and conscious anchoring, a few precautions are good to take, especially in our social interactions.
In any context, it is useful to develop your internal anchoring and self-knowledge to minimize external anchoring. Certain factors are indeed likely to promote anchoring, such as mood : Birte Englich and Kirsten Soder explain, for example , in an article in the journal Judgment and Decision Making that sad people are more easily " anchored " than people who are in a neutral or happy state.
Individuals' personalities also exert a significant influence: according to another study by Cuneyt Eroglu and Keely Croxton, conscientious, amiable and not very extroverted people tend to be more influenced by the anchoring effect, as do people who are very open to new experiences, according to the conclusions of a research article by Todd McElroy and Keith Dowd. By being aware of our more or less strong propensity to be anchored, we can develop a vigilance to unsettle the mechanism when necessary.
Finally, let's not worry unnecessarily : each of us is certainly influenced but can also influence (positively, of course) our environment. All that remains is to dare to speak out to challenge preconceived ideas and dare to take action to change the rules of the game.
