The concept of anchoring has its origins in the study of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is an approach to communication by linking neurological processes, language and behavioral patterns through “programming.” What does that mean? Well, the concept of NLP is that it can be used in casual conversation to subliminally condition the mind, yours or others. As an aside, the concept is somewhat controversial in terms of validity. Some people think it’s pure hogwash. Some people consider it evil mind control while others claim that it’s useful for personal enrichment purposes. Personally I believe it works, but I’m a firm moderate on the subject. I’ve seen its effects firsthand, but I personally don’t believe all the hype. But I digress.
Anchoring is essentially all about association of statements while using some sort of physical gesture to do so. That is to say, language is used to associate two or more statements and gestures are the medium to link them together. The underlying objective is persuasive in nature. In other words, the purpose of anchoring is to subconsciously persuade the target toward one way of thinking.
Though the concept of anchoring might sound somewhat cryptic, it is actually used fairly significantly outside of social engineering. In fact, some sales people use anchoring as a sales tactic. For example, let’s assume a situation where a target and a sales person are sitting across from one another at table. During casual conversation, the sales person may make a reference about how bad the traffic is in the city. This will generally generate some kind of agreeable response by the target. A head nod or otherwise. After all, bad traffic is something that all of us can relate to. This is step one in the anchoring setup. While describing the bad traffic, he puts his left hand on the table forming a roadblock hand gesture. The negative association has now been built. Now it needs to be reinforced two or more time during the course of the conversation and with similar associations.
