Are the anchoring effect and the Einstellung effect two facets of the same phenomenon

Abstract The anchoring effect and the Einstellung effect are two cognitive biases studied in different areas of psychology: respectively, decision making and problem solving. In both cases, the activation of an irrelevant representation creates a “mental set” effect. This article presents an overview of the apparent similarities and dissimilarities between these two phenomena. Exploring the relationship between them offers promising prospects for understanding the underlying mechanisms. We hypothesize that the two effects are based on analogous cognitive mechanisms and propose several lines of research aimed at testing this hypothesis.