First Is Best

Abstract

We experience the world serially rather than simultaneously. A century of research on human and nonhuman animals has suggested that the first experience in a series of two or more is cognitively privileged. We report three experiments designed to test the effect of first position on implicit preference and choice using targets that range from individual humans and social groups to consumer goods. Experiment 1 demonstrated an implicit preference to buy goods from the first salesperson encountered and to join teams encountered first, even when the difference in encounter is mere seconds. In Experiment 2 the first of two consumer items presented in quick succession was more likely to be chosen. In Experiment 3 an alternative hypothesis that first position merely accentuates the valence of options was ruled out by demonstrating that first position enhances preference for the first even when it is evaluatively negative in meaning (a criminal). Together, these experiments demonstrate a “first is best” effect and we offer possible interpretations based on evolutionary mechanisms of this “bound” on rational behavior and suggest that automaticity of judgment may be a helpful principle in clarifying previous inconsistencies in the empirical record on the effects of order on preference and choice.

“Heads or tails?”—A reachability bias in binary choice.

“…Order effects in binary choice are harder to find in the literature, especially among physical objects. A recent excep tion is Carney and Banaji (2012), who found a "first is best" effect in binary choice. However, their stimuli were presented separately in rapid succession rather than simultaneously, and for all their purposes could just as well have been choice from three or more options.…”

How Is the Mobile Internet Different? Search Costs and Local Activities

“…A long literature suggests that there are primacy effects on choice, or benefits to being first or early in a sequence (Becker 1954, Miller and Krosnick 1998, Carney and Banaji 2008. Most people start browsing from the top of lists, so higher ranked items are likely to receive more attention.…”

The Intuitive Traditionalist

“…Perceivers overweigh what comes first when information is processed heuristically (Freund, Kruglanski, & Schpitzajzen, 1985;Heaton & Kruglanski, 1991;Tetlock, 1983;Ybarra, Schaberg, & Keiper, 1999). First options are also evaluated more favorably, but only when conscious thinking is circumvented so that more automatic thinking is relied upon (Carney & Banaji, 2012).…”