Are Moderators Moderate? Testing the ‘Anchoring and Adjustment’ Hypothesis in the Context of Marking Politics Exams

On the basis of an experiment we confirm the hypothesis – derived from the ‘anchoring and adjustment’ heuristic – that the difference that a moderator makes to the grade awarded by a first marker is less than the difference between the grades awarded by two independent (or ‘double-blind’) markers. We suggest that double-blind marking is therefore more objective and reliable than moderator-based marking, although the former clearly has significantly higher administrative costs than the latter.