1) Mount Everest is more than 2,000ft tall: estimate the height of Mount Everest
2) Fewer than 50,000 babies are born in the USA each day: estimate the number of babies born in the USA each day
The correct answers are given at the bottom of this page.
If, like most people, you seriously underestimated the first figure and seriously overestimated the second, then you are mostly likely not a political extremist. If you a) showed the opposite pattern, b) underestimated or overestimated both or c) were pretty close to the correct answer, then you are probably on either the hard left or the hard right.
A very well-known psychological phenomenon is the anchoring effect. For most of us, hearing a relatively low or high number (eg 2,000ft or 50,000 babies) anchors our frame of reference, causing us to go too high and too low respectively when making a subsequent estimate.
But a recent study found that political extremists – whether on the left or right – are less susceptible to anchoring effects, presumably because they are more confident in their own beliefs and less susceptible to outside influences.
For a fully referenced version of this article, go to benambridge.com Fancy some more quizzes? Order Psy-Q by Ben Ambridge (Profile Books, £8.99) or £6.99 from bookshop.theguardian.com
Answers: 1) 29,029ft and 2) 11,000 babies
