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Initial salary figures can anchor candidates, shifting counteroffers toward them.

The Claim

In salary negotiations, job candidates often adjust their salary expectations toward an employer-provided initial salary anchor before the employer makes further negotiation moves.

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The Short Version

The core claim is well supported: an initial salary figure can anchor candidates and pull their subsequent bargaining position toward it. Strong negotiation research backs this anchoring effect, including in salary contexts. The main caveat is that the best evidence more directly measures counteroffers than private expectations, and the exact timing implied by the wording is less explicitly tested.

Caveats

  • The strongest evidence shows movement in counteroffers or judgments; it does not always directly measure a candidate’s internal salary expectation.
  • Salary-specific evidence for employer-to-candidate anchoring is solid but less extensive than the broader negotiation anchoring literature.
  • The phrase about adjustment occurring before further employer moves is inferred from the mechanism more than directly isolated in the cited studies.

The Receipts

  1. First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

  2. Anchoring, Information, Expertise, and Negotiation

    Vanderbilt Law School

  3. Reconsider what your MBA negotiation course taught you

    Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes / ScienceDirect

  4. Anchoring effects in salary negotiations: When even jokers get a serious raise

    Journal of Applied Social Psychology

  5. First Offers as Anchors: The Role of Perspective-Taking and Negotiator Focus

    Journal of Management Studies

  6. Initiating Salary Discussions With an Extreme Request: Anchoring Effects on Initial Salary Offers

    Journal of Applied Social Psychology

  7. Negotiating under the influence: Effects of anchoring and perspective-taking on negotiation outcomes

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

  8. Anchoring and adjustment in social inference: The role of accessible anchors

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

  9. The role of anchors and power in negotiations

    Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

  10. The anchoring effect: a meta-analysis

    Michigan State University Digital Repository

+ 15 more sources — see the full list on Lenz