A cognitive bias in which the first piece of information encountered — the "anchor" — disproportionately influences all subsequent judgments, even when that anchor is arbitrary or irrelevant. Documented by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, anchoring distorts negotiations, valuations, and forecasts because adjustments away from the anchor are systematically insufficient.
In strategic decisions, the first number on the whiteboard, the prior CEO's revenue target, or the competitor's pricing all act as anchors. Multi-expert analysis with independent reasoning is one of the few reliable defenses, because each expert anchors on different starting points.