Anchored in the Past: How Cognitive Anchoring and Stability Bias Shape Our Perceptions of Others
It was a summer afternoon when I found myself face-to-face with an old friend I hadn’t seen in nearly 40 years. We’d been inseparable as teenagers, sharing every secret, every ambition, every detail of our small-town lives. My memories of her were vivid, almost cinematic — her quick wit, her fiery opinions, and the way she always seemed to be at the center of every gathering, commanding attention with a confidence I’d admired. As I waited for her to arrive, I could almost hear her laugh, see the familiar gestures that were so distinctly hers. I was expecting her to be exactly the same as she had been back then, as though time had simply paused.
But when she walked in, the person standing before me wasn’t the one I remembered. Her face, though still familiar, carried the subtle marks of time, and her demeanor was quieter, more measured. Over the course of our conversation, I realized how much had changed. She spoke about her work with a calm self-assurance that felt foreign to the outspoken girl I had once known. Her priorities, too, were different; she had traded the youthful restlessness I had identified with for a life that seemed rooted in stability and peace. I kept searching for glimpses of the person I remembered — the fiery laugh, the impulsive energy — but they weren’t there. At first, I was unsettled, even disappointed, though I couldn’t quite place why. It wasn’t that she had changed in a bad way; it was that she had changed at all, and I hadn’t prepared myself for it.
Looking back, I realize how unfair my expectations were. I had locked her into the version of herself that I had known decades earlier, frozen in my mind as the person she was when we were young. The dissonance I felt that afternoon wasn’t just about her transformation; it was about the disconnect between my memory and her reality. Instead of seeing her for who she had become, I had approached her with the lens of who she used to be. It struck me later how easy it is to do this — not just with old friends, but with anyone who has stepped out of our immediate orbit for a time. Our memories, vivid as they may seem, are static; the people they represent are not. And when those two worlds collide, it can leave us feeling confused, even a little adrift, unsure of how to reconcile the person we once knew with the person standing in front of us.
