### abstract ###
MISC previous research on anchoring has shown this heuristic to be a very robust psychological phenomenon ubiquitous across many domains of human judgment and decision-making
MISC despite the prevalence of anchoring effects  researchers have only recently begun to investigate the underlying factors responsible for how and in what ways a person is susceptible to them
AIMX this paper examines how one such factor  the big-five personality trait of openness-to-experience  influences the effect of previously presented anchors on participants' judgments
OWNX our findings indicate that participants high in openness-to-experience were significantly more influenced by anchoring cues relative to participants low in this trait
OWNX these findings were consistent across two different types of anchoring tasks providing convergent evidence for our hypothesis
### introduction ###
MISC the anchoring effect  CITATION  refers to the adjustment of one's assessment  higher or lower  based upon previously presented external information or an  anchor
MISC the anchoring heuristic appears to be prevalent throughout human decision processes and has been shown to reliably influence judgments in a variety of domains including probability estimates  CITATION   negotiation  CITATION   legal judgments  CITATION   and general knowledge  CITATION
MISC further  anchoring effects appear viable across most situations for both novices and experts  CITATION  and seem to be effective under conditions of monetary incentives  CITATION  and in real-world settings  CITATION
MISC anchoring thus appears to be a very robust psychological phenomenon
MISC however  not all individuals may be equally influenced by anchoring cues
MISC identification of factors that influence how and in what ways a person is susceptible to this heuristic should further the understanding of the process
MISC one avenue of approach is to investigate the role of individual difference factors
MISC tversky and kahneman  CITATION  pointed to the important role of  personal characteristics  of the decision maker in risky choice situations
MISC later work by stanovich and west  CITATION  suggested that intellectual traits influence decision making and consequential choice preference
MISC recently  individual differences have been found in numerical reliance  CITATION   ambiguity  CITATION   preference for actions or inactions  CITATION  and the optimistic bias  CITATION
MISC the big-five personality traits  CITATION  have proven to be important individual difference factors for understanding decision choices
MISC further  attesting to the importance of individual differences  levin and hart  CITATION  demonstrated that individual differences in preference appear to originate at a very early age
MISC taken together  these findings suggest that the impact of individual difference factors on decision-making is both profound and pervasive
AIMX the purpose of the current study is to investigate how one individual difference factor may influence the strength of the anchoring effect
AIMX specifically  we are interested in how individual differences in the personality trait of openness-to-experience influences anchoring effects
MISC in the last couple of decades the five-factor model of personality has become the most widely tested and well-regarded personality trait model
MISC a great deal of research has supported this model's validity and reliability  CITATION
MISC while most research has agreed on the nature of the first four factors  the nature of the fifth factor has been controversial  a controversy predominately based upon whether a lexical approach  derived from language frequency within the lexicon of a particular language  CITATION   or a questionnaire approach  CITATION  should be used to measure it
MISC the fifth factor is often labeled openness-to-experience  which refers to a propensity to adjust beliefs and behaviors when exposed to new types of information or ideas  CITATION
MISC individuals scoring high on this dimension are more open to new ideas  CITATION  and motivated to seek variety and external experience
MISC individuals scoring low tend to be less inclined to consider alternative opinions and are more steadfast in their own beliefs  CITATION  making them more likely to rely upon information that is familiar and conventional  CITATION
MISC a fundamental aspect of the anchoring effect is that individuals are sensitive to information which they have experienced
MISC this change in judgment  which is based upon external cues  seems particularly relevant and related to the openness-to-experience personality trait
MISC specifically  as research has shown  the openness trait reflects individual propensities to  adjust  one's beliefs  CITATION  and to consider external information  CITATION
OWNX therefore  based upon the nature of the openness-to-experience trait and the processes involved in the anchoring effect  we hypothesize that individual differences in openness-to-experience will influence susceptibility to anchoring effects
OWNX specifically  we hypothesize that the judgments of those individuals high in this trait will be more influenced by previously presented anchors whereas those individuals low in this trait will be less influenced by the anchor
OWNX to test this hypothesis  we first measured individual levels of the personality trait of openness-to-experience
OWNX we then provided participants with an anchoring task involving either the mississippi river study  NUMBER  or african nations in the un study  NUMBER 
