decision-making process. The presence of pre-anchor preferences also impeded the extent to which external anchors affected the group decision, as groups tend to allocate more weight to self-generated anchors, according to the 'competing anchor hypothesis'. A series of experiments were conducted to investigate anchoring bias in groups and possible solutions to avoid or mitigate anchoring. The first experiment established that groups are indeed influenced by anchors while the other two experiments highlighted methods to overcome group anchoring bias. Utilized methods include the use of process accountability and motivation through competition instead of cooperation to reduce the influence of anchors within groups. Business intelligence A peer-reviewed study sought to investigate the effect of business intelligence (BI) systems on the anchoring effect. Business intelligence denotes an array of software and services used by businesses to gather valuable insights into an organisation's performance. The extent to which cognitive bias is mitigated by using these systems was the overarching question in this study. While the independent variable was the use of the BI system, the dependent variable was the outcome of the decision-making process. The subjects were presented with a 'plausible' anchor and a 'spurious' anchor in a forecasting decision. It was found that, while the BI system mitigated the negative effects of the spurious anchor, it had no influence on the effects of the plausible anchor. This is important in a business context, because it shows that humans are still susceptible to cognitive biases, even when using sophisticated technological systems. One of the subsequent recommendations from the experimenters was to implement a forewarning into BI systems as to the anchoring effect. Causes Several theories have been put forth to explain what causes anchoring, and although some explanations are more popular than others, there is no consensus as to which is best. In a study on possible causes of anchoring, two authors described anchoring as easy to demonstrate, but hard to explain. At least one group of researchers has argued that multiple causes are at play, and that what is called "anchoring" is actually several different effects. Anchoring-and-adjusting In their original study, Tversky and Kahneman put forth a view later termed anchoring-as-adjustment. According to this theory, once an anchor is set, people adjust away from it to get to their final answer; however, they adjust insufficiently, resulting in their final guess being closer to the anchor than it would be otherwise. Other researchers also