Daily Horizons: Evidence of Narrow Bracketing in Judgments from 9,000 MBA Admission Interviews

Abstract

Many professionals, from auditors and lawyers, to clinical psychologists and journal editors, divide a continuous flow of judgments into subsets. College admissions interviewers, for instance, evaluate but a handful of applicants a day. We conjectured that in such situations, individuals engage in narrow bracketing, assessing each subset in isolation, and as a consequence avoid deviating much—for any given subset—from the expected overall distribution of judgments. For instance, an interviewer who has already highly recommended three applicants on a given day may be reluctant to do so for a fourth applicant. Data from over 9,000 MBA interviews supported this prediction. Auxiliary analyses suggest that contrast effects and non-random scheduling of interviews are unlikely alternative explanations.