Primacy Effect: Characteristics, Examples And How It Influences Us
Primacy Effect: Does this concept sound familiar to you? It is a phenomenon that has to do with perception, memory and attention. Through perception, our brain receives and processes information from the environment through the senses to form a certain impression.
Attention allows us to witness these stimuli and memory to store them. The primacy effect combines these two capacities, and is due to the fact of remembering more and better the information that one perceives at the beginning ; for example, in a list of words.
In this article, we will tell you what this phenomenon is and why it occurs and, in addition, we will give some examples to make it better understood. Finally, we talk about the impact it can have on us, as well as on advertising and marketing.
Primacy effect: what does it consist of?
The primacy effect is a phenomenon typical of fundamental and cognitive psychology. It is a cognitive bias that involves remembering more and better information that was presented (and therefore perceived) first, with a tendency to forget information perceived later.
An example of the primacy effect is this: imagine they read you a long list of words, then ask you what words you remember. Thanks to this effect, it is likely that you will remember the first words on the list much better (and also the last ones; in this case, we are talking about another phenomenon, the recency effect).
Why is it produced? Long term memory
The primacy effect is believed to occur because the initial items or information are better stored in our long-term memory (MLP) than subsequent items. However, and compared to this, this phenomenon is weakened in the lists of words or items or in the information presented quickly, since in this case we have less time to store it in the MLP.
In addition, presenting the items at the beginning increases the likelihood that these items will be repeated more times than the others, and this makes the ‘transfer’ of information from short-term memory (MCP) to memory more likely. MLP.
A related phenomenon: the primacy of the result
Interestingly, researchers believe that the primacy effect also appears when we learn to decide based on past experiences. So the first thing we learned (and the first rewards we received) would condition our future decisions more than subsequent learning.
In this case, it is a more specific phenomenon: the primacy of the result. In other words: the first results that we obtain in certain tasks, or during the performance of certain actions, condition us to repeat the act in the future, to a greater or lesser extent.
Example of the primacy effect
During the 1950s, Solomon Asch, an American psychologist recognized for his contributions to social psychology, conducted a study where he verified the primacy effect. Study participants listened to a list of adjectives describing a person. Here’s what happened: When participants were told about someone “envious, stubborn, hardworking, and intelligent”, most had a bad impression of the person.
However, if they heard those same words in a different order, where the positive adjectives (hardworking and smart) were placed first, they would have a better impression of the person being described to them. It may have to do with how we do descriptions, where we usually include the most important at the beginning, and then we go into details.
How does this influence us
How does the primacy effect influence us? We have seen, through the example with positive and negative adjectives, that this phenomenon can influence us when it comes to judging people. And it can also be linked to first impressions, for example, which have an impact on the image we have of others.
Marketing and Advertising
On the other hand, in the field of marketing and advertising, the primacy effect also influences a lot. Advertisers know the phenomenon and try to put the most relevant messages at the beginning of their creations. They know that the most important places to motivate the sale they are considering are the beginning and the end of their time.
For example, commercials that start right after a high-profile show ends (or after the chime, where the audience is highest), are better served than those placed in the middle or later. This is one of the reasons ad spaces follow New Years campaigns.
The primacy effect concerns basic cognitive processes, such as perception, and cognitive abilities such as attention and human memory. Now that you know about this effect, which appears in most people, you can figure out where to place the part or type of post that interests you so that it is best remembered by your audience.
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