Immigration is such an emotive topic that rationality seldom seems to make its opinions heard. A new study from the University of Geneva explores whether one of the most commonly seen cognitive biases might be hampering a rational debate from occurring.
The research explored how anchoring changed how people perceived migration and migration levels, and especially whether the numbers of immigrants reported in the Swiss media influenced how many refugees the Swiss people would b prepared to receive.
“A widely-known reasoning bias has been analysed since 1974, namely anchoring bias,” the authors explain. “This means that when you ask someone to evaluate a situation, you can influence his response by giving him a low number (or, by contrast, a high number) that will at first serve to ‘anchor’ his thinking.”
Anchoring immigration
The researchers conducted a number of questionnaires with Swiss people about immigration, with 50,000 as the mean anchor point, and 1,000 at the low end and 100,000 at the high end of the spectrum. Questions were then sent to 300 people asking them whether they agree with the proposal from ‘a political party’ to welcome 1,000 immigrants, or whether they think it should be more or less. A second group were given the same questionnaire but the figure was 100,000 immigrants.
The results were clear. Those who had been anchored towards the lower number were willing to accept just under 21,000 immigrants per year, but those in the second group averaged 126,000 immigrants per year!
The researchers then set out to explore whether political affiliation might influence the findings. This time, the volunteers were split into four groups, the first of which received the 1,000 refugee recommendation from the Swiss People’s Party (UDC). The second group received the same figure from the Socialist Party, before the third and fourth groups received the 100,000 immigrant recommendation from both the UDC and Socialist Party.
“To our surprise, the averages of participants’ assessments were almost the same between groups 1 (20,000 immigrants) and 2 on the one hand (15,000 immigrants), and 3 (140,000 immigrants) and 4 on the other hand (130,000 immigrants). This proves that the political source of the anchor figure does not matter for the public’s assessment; only the number itself counts,” the researchers explain.
Equally surprising was the fact that people who identified as conservative actually wanted more refugees admitted into the country than even the anchoring recommendation. Whilst their suggestions were not as high as those who identified as liberal, it is nonetheless a pleasantly surprising result.
“This result was striking. In general, participants who were given a high anchor figure tend to answer with a lower number than the one proposed in the preamble. Here, it was higher!” the researchers say. “One can imagine that this issue provoked a somewhat more humanistic reaction, which encouraged people to defend higher figures than those allegedly proposed by a politician.”
Undoubtedly the biggest finding is the way that people were swayed by the anchoring effect into giving radically different answers to the same question. In a time where conversations around migration are so fraught and emotive, this is perhaps an important factor to take into consideration.
