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LIT-1067: Failures to replicate a key result of the selective accessibility theory of anchoring

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StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-15 from the authors' manuscript on UCL Discovery (discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10074759/1/HarrisEtAl_2019_anchoring.pdf, eprint 10074759; 76 pp. with appendices and supplementary experiments). It is a Word-generated manuscript dated 23 May 2019, which Unpaywall and OpenAlex label submittedVersion. Its abstract is worded differently from the published one, so it is not the APA version of record (JEP: General 148(9), e30–e50), which returned 403 from this environment. Worth reading as the preregistered, high-powered test of the lexical-decision evidence for selective accessibility (Mussweiler & Strack 2000a, Studies 1 and 2). In five experiments of N = 128, anchoring was large every time (d ≈ 0.85–1.39) and anchor-consistent word recognition never moved (η²G ≤ .004). An exploratory meta-analytic Bayes factor favours the null by 21 to 1. Validation studies show the same tasks also miss direct picture priming. For CLAIM-298 it shows that the most direct published measure of "anchors change what is reachable" does not replicate and cannot detect priming. The claim's psychological form therefore rests on inferred, not measured, accessibility, and the theory is neither refuted nor confirmed. The authors' leading explanation of durable anchoring is a provisional answer formed at the comparison, which is neutral between retrieval and evaluation. For QUESTION-109 it bears only indirectly. It also corrects the record's attribution: by this paper's account the lexical-decision studies are Mussweiler & Strack 2000a, not 1999 (LIT-1078).
Tagscognition, social-science
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-876 — Harris et al. — Failures to replicate a key result of selective accessibility
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-335 — Selective accessibility, the account that comparing a target with a plausible anchor makes anchor-consistent knowledge more accessible and that this knowledge carries anchoring, fits the moderations of the effect by applicability, representativeness and plausibility that Strack and Mussweiler found, but its accessibility step is inferred, not measured: Harris et al.'s repetition of the recognition test of it, four times by lexical decision and once by continuous identification, found nothing in five preregistered experiments, with tasks that also missed direct picture priming, THEORY-337 — In the comparative-question paradigm, judging whether a quantity is higher or lower than a high or low anchor pulls the later estimate of it toward the anchor, with large effects in five preregistered experiments of 128 people each, lasting through dozens of intervening word-recognition trials

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Harris, A. J. L., Blower, F. B. N., Rodgers, S. A., Lagator, S., Page, E., Burton, A., Urlichich, D. and Speekenbrink, M. (2019). Failures to replicate a key result of the selective accessibility theory of anchoring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148(9), e30–e50. DOI 10.1037/xge0000644

Read in full (NOTE-876). Five preregistered experiments of 128 people each repeated the lexical-decision test of selective accessibility (Mussweiler and Strack 2000a). Anchoring was large in all five and the accessibility effect absent in all five, with an exploratory Bayes factor of about 21 to 1 for the null. The same tasks also missed direct picture priming, so the authors conclude that the method cannot test the account, not that the account is false.

Why this is here

CLAIM-298 (whose psychological form is now CLAIM-315) grounds its psychological form in the selective accessibility account of anchoring (LIT-1064, LIT-1078). This paper shows that the most direct published measure of the accessibility step does not replicate, and that the measure could not detect priming at all (NOTE-876). The account survives as theory; its retrieval step is inferred, not measured.

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