Search

Recent research (e.g., Burns & Krygier, 2015; Chi & Burns, 2022) demonstrated that people could exhibit a strong bias towards the smaller first digits, which is consistent with the pattern predicted by Benford's law. However, this psychological phenomenon was predominantly observed when generating meaningful numbers for decision-making. We investigated explanations rooted in the statistical acquisition of distributional information and the impact of anchoring during number estimation. Undergraduate students were asked to estimate the weight, lifespan and group-size of animals after learning different distributions of these variables, supplied with an anchored value, either an average or a starting point, for reference. The Benford bias reasonably emerged regardless of the variable distribution, yet was strongly influenced by the anchored information. Notably, showing average values significantly suppressed Benford bias. These findings offered insights into the cognitive process of number estimation in the presence of statistical evidence and anchored information.

Burns & Krygier (2015) demonstrated that people could exhibit a strong bias towards the smaller first digits, in a way similar to that described by Benford’s law. This paper sought to expand the scope of this phenomenon and to test a possible explanation, the Recognition Hypothesis that a Benford bias is due to life-long environmental exposure to this statistical relationship. Participants completed three numerical tasks: A Generation Task requiring answering trivia questions; a Selection Task requiring selecting between two numerical responses; and an Estimation task requiring estimating the number of jelly beans in a jar. The results found no evidence of any first digit effect in the Recognition Task, some evidence of Benford bias in the Generation Task and strong evidence in the Estimation Task. Future research should focus on alternatives to the Recognition Hypothesis and investigate the parameters of Benford bias in generation tasks