When the best appears to be saved for last: Serial position effects on choice

Abstract

Decision-makers often evaluate options sequentially due to constraints on attention, timing, or physical location of the options. Choosing the best option will therefore often depend on people's memories of the options. Because imperfect recall introduces uncertainty in earlier options, judgments of those options should regress toward the category mean as memory decays over time. Relatively desirable options will therefore tend to seem less desirable with time, and relatively undesirable options will tend to seem less undesirable with time. We therefore predicted that people will tend to select the first option in a set when choosing between generally undesirable options, and will tend to select the last when choosing between generally desirable options. We demonstrate these serial position effects in choices among paintings, American Idol audition clips, jellybeans, and female faces, provide evidence of its underlying mechanism, and explain how these findings build on existing accounts.

Investment in Energy Efficiency by Small and Medium-Sized Firms: An Empirical Analysis of the Adoption of Process Improvement Recommendations

“…Bruine de Bruin (2006) observes serial position effects when options are judged in a sequence, as in the case of figure skating competition, and finds evidence that later performers obtain higher scores. Li and Epley (2009) demonstrate using a series of experiments in different settings that decision makers demonstrate primacy effects when they choose amongst undesirable options and recency effects when they choose amongst desirable options. Mantonakis et.…”

Beware how you compare: comparison direction dictates stimulus-valence-modulated presentation-order effects in preference judgment

“…Decision models that do not account for presentation-order effects are inherently at fault with respect to decision-making reality, because these effects occur even in decisions that are made only once. Indeed, the presentation order of choice options has been shown to systematically influence the results in contexts as diverse and practically relevant as, in addition to those mentioned in the introduction, evaluation of consumer brands (Brunner & Wänke, 2006), preference comparisons of paintings (MacLaughlin & Kermisch, 1997) and of musical excerpts (Koh, 1967), TV audience voting of musical performances (Li & Epley, 2009), and selection of causal explanations (McGill, 1990).…”

The psychology of ‘regrettable substitutions’: examining consumer judgements of Bisphenol A and its alternatives

“…That is, the presence of scientific controversy may cause people to ‘throw the baby out with the bath water’, and treat these as two equally negative and ambiguous options. If this were the case, we might expect people to prefer the option that they encounter first (regardless of whether that option was Bisphenol A or a substitute), because their memory for that option and its negative qualities has had more time to fade (Li and Epley 2009). Moreover, if this finding were obtained it would have considerable practical implications for science communication, because it would suggest that scientific findings that are the subject of some controversy might be treated similarly to situations in which there is no scientific evidence at all.…”

“…Instead, the questions surrounding Bisphenol A science might cause people to interpret the information about Bisphenol A as having little informative value, effectively making the choice between two equally negative and ambiguous options. If this were the case, then we would expect people to prefer the option that is presented first (regardless of whether that option is Bisphenol A or substitutes) because when all options are equally negative people tend to prefer the first options that they encounter (Li & Epley, 2009). In Study 2, we further examined whether framing the substitute chemical as ‘BPA-free’ improves how it is evaluated, even when people know that the alternative product contains a chemical that has not been scientifically scrutinised.…”

“…Past research has demonstrated that when all choice options are negative, people tend to prefer the first options that are encountered, presumably because their negative feelings for those options have had more time to fade from memory (Li and Epley 2009). However, the present results are also consistent with the status quo bias; that is, the tendency to stick with the currently accepted or known option (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988).…”