The primacy effect can potentially have a significant impact on our choices. Understanding the primacy effect ensures that we make better judgments in our day-to-day life.

Complex Decision Making

The primacy effect impacts the way we make decisions, as the way we receive information has proven to be a critical factor in the decision-making process.² An individual’s opinion can easily be manipulated or skewed based on their first impression of an object or person.

Take online reviews, for example. If the first review you read about a product is glowing, you’re more likely to view the product positively, even if later reviews are more mixed. Marketers understand this and often highlight the most positive feedback first or structure websites so their best-selling or highest-rated items appear at the top. In addition to the order of the reviews, we also tend to place greater emphasis on the beginning and end of each review (the serial position effect). Researchers from Graz University of Technology looked at reviews across a range of domains, including movies, smartphones, and airline Tweets, and found that users tended to be most influenced by the beginning and end portions of reviews, with the middle content receiving less attention.¹⁷

Anchoring Effects

The primacy effect can additionally affect our decision-making ability due to its influence on the anchoring bias. The anchoring bias describes an individual’s tendency to rely on initial information to anchor subsequent judgments and interpretations. The primacy effect partnered with the anchoring bias results in an individual relying too heavily on the first piece of information they receive, and then neglecting any subsequent information learned. This mix of cognitive biases can be especially problematic, as it prevents an individual from learning and making rash decisions.³ 

The primacy effect can present systemic problems, especially with regard to its influence on our democracy. Research has shown that the primacy effect can subtly, but powerfully, influence electoral outcomes, public opinion, and even policy support. The main problem with this is that voters are often completely unaware that their supposedly independent decisions are in fact being influenced by their own cognitive processes. 

Elections

Political scientists Jonathan Koppell and Jennifer Steen demonstrated the influence of the primacy effect in their 2004 study titled The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcome.⁴ Koppell and Steen found that in elections in New York City, the candidate who was listed first on the ballot tended to receive a greater proportion of the vote. The study was based on the 1998 Democratic Primary in New York City, where candidates’ names on election ballots were rotated among different precincts in the area. In 71 of the 79 elections, candidates who were listed first garnered more votes when listed first than when placed in other positions. In seven cases, the advantage conferred by being listed first exceeded the winner’s victory margin, suggesting that if the same candidate were listed at the top of the ballot in all precincts, it could swing the election in their favor.

The previous experiment was based on a study conducted by Miller and Krosnick in 1998, which found similar effects for candidate preferences in laboratory studies.⁵ The study titled “The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes” found that citizens who felt compelled to vote but lacked sufficient information to make informed choices were influenced by the order in which candidates’ names appeared on the ballot. Furthermore, although their choice of candidate was dictated by the primacy effect, individuals generated reasons for their choice—either reasons to vote for candidates at the beginning of the ballot, or justifications not to vote for those towards the end of the ballot.

Consistent with this analysis, Miller and Krosnick found that in Ohio’s 1992 election returns, name-order effects and the primacy effect appeared in 48% of the 118 races, advancing candidates listed first at an average rate of 2.5%. Interestingly enough, the primacy effect was most influential in races with the following characteristics: in which party affiliation of the candidates was not listed, races which were minimally publicized, and when no incumbent candidate was available as an election option for a region. 

These two studies provide an excellent example of how an election ballot structure paired with the primacy effect influences election outcomes, especially when voters lack a significant preference for candidates.

In the courtroom

Another example of the primacy effect can be seen in jury decision-making. When a trial begins, the prosecution typically presents its case first, laying out evidence and arguments before the defense has a chance to respond. Due to the primacy effect, jurors may form early impressions that strongly influence how they interpret everything that follows—even if the defense later presents compelling counterarguments. This early framing can bias the way jurors process and remember information, potentially impacting the fairness of the verdict. In high-stakes legal proceedings, where impartiality is critical, the primacy effect can therefore pose a serious challenge to justice.

An experiment conducted in 1969 with students acting as jurors, for example, found that their first tentative verdict strongly influenced their final decision, regardless of whether the prosecution or defense presented their case first.¹² 65 university students were asked to read the same trial arguments, but in different orders—some read the prosecution’s arguments first and the defense’s second, while others did the opposite. After each round of arguments, they gave a tentative verdict, and then a final verdict after seeing all the evidence.

Even when the initial verdicts were private and non-binding, those who first learned “guilty” were more likely to convict. Similarly, those who initially chose “innocent” tended to acquit in the end. This suggests that early impressions can shape final judgments, showing how the primacy effect and early commitments can influence judicial decision-making.

You’ve probably experienced the primacy effect yourself anytime you’ve tried to learn a list of items. It’s much easier to recall the first item than one in the middle.

Items that appear first on a list are stored in long-term memory more easily than subsequent items further down the list. There is evidence that when people read a series of statements about a person, the amount of time they spend reading the items declines with each new piece of information.⁶

We are more likely to fall victim to the primacy effect when we’re tired than when we’re wide awake, and when we’re distracted rather than paying attention.⁷ For example, being mentally tired affects the way people form opinions about others.¹⁶ In one study, students who had just taken long final exams were found to be more likely to rely on first impressions than those who weren’t tired. However, when the students knew they would have to explain or justify their opinions later, that effect disappeared. The authors suggested that being tired makes it harder for us to keep processing new information, so we settle quickly on an early impression—something called a “need for closure.” 

The primacy effect is connected to the recency effect—the fact that we recall the latest information better. For example, in competitions such as the Eurovision Song Contest and ice skating, it was found that higher marks were given to competitors who performed last.¹⁴

This effect needs to be taken into account anytime a series of people, objects, or ideas are presented to someone to reduce the importance of the first ones compared to the others. Early traits lead us to form an initial expectancy about the people we meet, and once that expectancy is formed, we tend to process information in ways that keep that expectancy intact. Unfortunately, once we have developed a schema, it becomes difficult to change it.

The primacy effect can be exploited for both good and bad reasons. In educational contexts, the primacy effect can have important implications for teaching and lesson planning. Since students are more likely to remember information introduced at the beginning of a learning session, it makes sense to front-load the most critical content early in the lesson. Presenting key concepts when attention and memory retention are highest can help reinforce understanding and improve long-term recall, making the start of a lesson a valuable window for delivering core material. This approach can also be bolstered by leveraging the recency effect and revisiting important information briefly at the end of a class. 

However, as discussed earlier, the primacy effect can have undesirable effects on important systems, potentially impacting people’s lives and futures. The information or impression someone receives first can shape how they interpret everything that follows. In some cases, their interpretation is unjustified or manipulated, simply because of how their memory works. When this bias goes unchecked or is used maliciously, it can lead to misjudgments, overlooked potential, or misplaced trust. Recognizing and accounting for the primacy effect in the design of systems, communications, and interactions is essential to promote fairness, improve outcomes, and ensure that later information is given equal weight in decision-making processes.

There’s still some uncertainty about the best way to counter the primacy effect when incorrect information has been given. Research on misinformation suggests that simply refuting earlier information isn’t always effective.¹⁵ Corrections need to offer a clear and believable alternative story. Presenting both sides in a balanced way might help, but there’s a risk: repeating the original message, even while arguing against it, can make it seem more familiar and believable. This approach essentially reinforces the primacy effect. People may also focus only on the parts that match what they already believe and ignore the rest—an effect also known as confirmation bias. This makes it challenging to change someone’s mind once a first impression has been formed.

Despite the lack of guidance on how to overcome the primacy effect in misinformation contexts, there are some simple exercises and tips that individuals can follow to reduce the bias in their everyday lives: 

Gather your information

The primacy effect can be reduced by taking the time to do research, allowing you to make informed decisions rather than being influenced by first impressions. To avoid being swayed by what's presented first, take the time to gather information, compare multiple sources, and explore alternatives before making a choice. By seeking out a fuller picture, you can make more informed, rational decisions based on quality and relevance—not just what caught your attention first.

Daily life

Now that you know what the primacy effect is, take time to ensure it isn’t affecting your daily life. For example, when you’re choosing a product online, ask yourself whether you’re favoring the first option just because it appeared at the top of the list, or if it’s actually the best choice for what you need. Or after a meeting, reflect on whether your opinion was shaped mostly by what the first speaker said, rather than by the full discussion. Building this kind of awareness can help you make more balanced, thoughtful decisions.

Pause before judging

One of the most effective ways to combat the primacy effect is to consciously withhold judgment. When meeting someone new or encountering new information, try to remind yourself that your initial reaction may not be the most accurate. Give yourself time to gather more context before forming a solid opinion. This is especially important in high-stakes environments, such as job interviews or team settings, where snap judgments can influence long-term outcomes.

Mix up the order

In situations where you’re creating content—such as giving a presentation, writing a report, or planning a lesson—be aware of how the order of information might unintentionally influence your audience. Try to vary the sequence or repeat key points throughout to reduce overreliance on what comes first. Similarly, when reviewing a list of candidates, ideas, or options, deliberately start from different points each time to reduce unconscious favoritism toward the first items.

Get used to reading more 

In today’s world of 10-second reels and 3-minute reads, it’s easy to be caught in the trap of just skimming the first few lines of an article or announcement without bothering to read to the end. In doing this, however, you might be missing out on important information or alternative perspectives that may help you to develop a more well-rounded opinion or perspective. Take the time to get the ‘full picture’ and always ask yourself if you’re missing important information that will help you make a better judgment. 

Have you ever met someone new and instantly formed an opinion, only to find that it stuck, even after learning more about them? Our first impressions often carry more weight than we realize, shaping how we perceive and judge others long after that initial encounter. The primacy effect was first studied in the context of how it influences our impressions of other individuals.

One of the first people to explore this particular application of the primary effect was Polish-American psychologist Solomon Eliot Asch. Considered a pioneer in social psychology, Asch dedicated much of his research to impression formation, conformity, and prestige suggestion.⁸ Asch was particularly interested in how humans formed impressions of other individuals and peers. His research focused on how easily humans could develop these impressions and how they could be influenced or manipulated. Asch conducted several experiments where he asked participants to form an initial impression of a hypothetical person based on characteristics presented.

One of Asch’s more notable studies was published in 1946 and explored the primacy effect regarding individuals and their impressions of others.⁹ In the study, Asch first presented participants with an initial list of character traits. He generated two different types of lists, one with character traits of an individual beginning with their positive traits, and the other list containing exactly the same traits, but in the opposite order. The first positive list characterized an individual as intelligent, industrious, impulsive, stubborn, and envious, with the second list containing the same list but in reverse.

Through a series of investigations, Asch asked his students to form impressions and write characterizations of the person whom the list described. He found that participants who read lists where positive traits came first formed more favorable impressions than those who read lists with negative traits first.⁹ The difference in list order resulted in a completely different description of the individual as perceived by others. After reading the first list, study participants described the individual as “an able person who possesses certain shortcomings, which do not, however, overshadow his merits.” The second list resulted in the individual being described as “a problem, whose abilities are hampered by his serious difficulties.”The primacy effect heavily influenced students from the study and thus created impressions of other individuals based on this bias alone.

One of the most powerful tools in shaping consumer perception is the ability to control first impressions. If we initially hear a bad review, we’ll likely discard or actively avoid that product in the future. On the other hand, a strong and positive first impression can anchor our perception, making us more likely to trust, remember, and even recommend the product. With this in mind, product releases and launches often take advantage of the primacy effect.

Before launching a product, companies usually implement a pre-promotion strategy to ensure the initial impression is memorable and positive. For example, Apple’s highly secretive pre-sale launch events are founded in anticipation, so that once the details of the product are released, everyone is talking about it in the media. By controlling the first message of a product to potential buyers, a marketer can ensure a positive first impression. Common avenues of pre-promotion releases are seen on television, the radio, the newspaper, the internet, and, more recently, influencer promotion.¹⁰

Examples of this initial pre-promotion can be seen in pre-product launch reveals, where companies showcase a product for the first time in a theater-like stage performance and broadcast the reveal. This technique is commonly used by Apple and Tesla to showcase new products in a new and luxurious light, ensuring customers remember the product and its excellent features.

It’s not just humans who are affected by the primacy effect. A growing body of research shows that different AI, such as large language models (LLMs) and artificial neural networks, are also susceptible to this bias.¹³ 

According to the primacy and recency effect, both humans and animals tend to remember items presented at the beginning and end of a sequence more accurately. In contrast, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are usually built with a type of memory that fades gradually over time.¹⁸ As a result, while ANNs often display the recency effect, they are generally not expected to exhibit the primacy effect. 

However, research into a particular ANN called structured state-space models (SSM) shows that this may not always be the case.¹⁹ SSMs are designed to process sequential data, such as time series, language, or signals, by modeling how information changes over time. In the study, a synthetic memory task was designed where models were asked to remember and verify if certain numbers appeared earlier in a sequence. The results showed that the SSM consistently performed best when recalling items from the beginning of the sequence, while a traditional LSTM model (a type of recurrent neural network) did not show this behavior. 

The results challenge the assumption that modern ANNs cannot mimic the primacy effect and open new possibilities for building more cognitively realistic machine learning systems. Furthermore, while primarily focused on AI, this research can also be applied to human neuroscience. SSMs were originally developed to model biological brain activity, so the study’s findings could potentially offer new avenues for understanding memory processes in the brain. 

There’s also evidence that the primacy effect is hardwired into LLMs like ChatGPT during their training. Researchers from the United States, Singapore, and China changed the order of answer choices (labels) in the questions they gave to ChatGPT for language tasks like identifying relationships between words or figuring out someone’s intent.¹³ Their experiments show that ChatGPT’s predictions are significantly influenced by the order in which labels are presented, with a strong bias toward selecting earlier labels. This effect was observed in over 85% of test instances for several datasets. 

The researchers also conducted the experiment with BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), a language model developed by Google in 2018 that helps machines understand human language more effectively. Unlike ChatGPT, BERT’s responses were completely unaffected by the order of the labels. 

The results of this study not only provide further evidence that LLMs can ‘inherit’ human-like biases, but that these qualities can compromise the reliability and fairness of their outputs. When we add the influence of the primacy effect on the human user of ChatGPT, information presented in the middle doesn’t stand a chance. 

Mineral exploration plays a vital role in supplying raw materials for modern technologies, such as batteries, electronics, and renewable energy infrastructure. However, it’s also highly controversial, with lots of environmental, social, and ethical implications. Aside from the disruption to the natural habitat, mineral exploration can also violate the rights of indigenous groups and spark disputes over land access and ownership of natural resources. 

So how do cognitive biases such as the primacy effect impact people’s opinions about environmental issues like mineral exploration? A study by researchers from Dublin, Ireland, investigated whether presenting positive or negative information first would affect individuals’ overall perceptions of the activity.¹⁵

Participants were given the same positive and negative information about mineral exploration, but in different sequences; some received the positive details first, while others started with the negatives. The participants then received the opposite type of information afterwards: e.g., participants who had received positive information first then received negative information, and vice versa. 

The results showed that those who encountered the positive information first were significantly more likely to form favorable overall attitudes, even after reading the negative content. In contrast, participants who received the negative information first tended to hold onto their unfavorable impressions, despite being exposed to the same positive facts. 

This study illustrates how first impressions shape the interpretation of subsequent information, with major implications for public communication strategies, especially in policy, advocacy, and education.

When we talk about the primacy effect (and more broadly, the serial position effect), we’re often referring to new information that’s just been presented to us. However, sometimes the information we’re asked to remember and recall is familiar to us, such as famous battles in history or US presidents. In these cases, the information may be remembered for other reasons. 

Researchers Dillon Murphy and Alan Castel, for example, looked at the primacy effect in the context of semantic memory, our long-term memory that stores our general knowledge about the world.²⁰ Adults were asked to freely recall (in any order) the US presidents, and unsurprisingly, they found that early presidents (like George Washington and John Adams) were remembered more frequently than those in the middle of the list. 

Yet for older adults, there was an additional “dual primacy effect.” Not only did they recall the first presidents, but they also showed a primacy effect for the first presidents they personally remembered from their own lifetimes (such as Eisenhower). This was attributed to the reminiscence bump, a psychological tendency to better remember events from our youth.

There are other factors at play as well. Early presidents are often heavily featured in education and cultural memory, making them more salient. If people see a president’s face every day on a bill or in their workplace, it’s going to stick better in their memory. Older adults’ personal memories of significant national events (like JFK’s assassination) can also reinforce early recall of certain presidents, skewing the primacy effect further. 

One president who tends to buck the serial position trend is Abraham Lincoln. Despite being situated in the middle of the chronological sequence, he is often recalled with ease due to his historical significance. His prominence also boosts the recall of presidents who served around the same time. This phenomenon is known as the von Restorff Effect (also known as the isolation effect) and describes when an item that stands out from a group is more likely to be remembered than the others.²¹

What it is

The primacy effect is a cognitive bias and refers to an individual’s tendency to better remember the first piece of information they encounter than the information they receive later on.

Why it happens

The primacy effect happens for several reasons, the main reason being our memory, as it is easier to remember what is first said on a list, compared to what is in the middle of a list. Additionally, the primacy effect tends to happen when people are either tired or distracted when trying to remember what’s on a list. Finally, the primacy effect is connected to the Recency Effect, in which we recall the latest information better.

Example 1 – Mineral exploration

A study in Ireland tested how the primacy effect shapes public opinion on mineral exploration and found that participants who received positive information first formed more favorable views, even after hearing negative points. This shows how first impressions can strongly influence attitudes, highlighting the importance of information order in public messaging.

Example 2 – US presidents 

The primacy effect, usually seen with new information, also applies to well-known facts in long-term memory—like recalling U.S. presidents. A study found that people tend to remember early presidents more easily, and older adults also recall presidents from their youth, a pattern linked to the reminiscence bump. Abraham Lincoln is remembered well due to his historical significance, a clear example of the Von Restorff Effect, where standout items are more easily recalled.

How to avoid it

Aside from being aware of the primacy effect, an individual should also focus on gathering as much information as possible when first making a decision and taking their time to avoid the bias and its effects on decision making. Additionally, exercising avoiding the primacy effect in our own life will help avoid it in complex decisions in the future.

Why do we remember information that we attach significance to better than information we repeat?

When we try to remember information, not all details stick equally. Some facts fade quickly, while others stay with us for years. The Levels of Processing Effect helps explain why this happens. It suggests that the deeper we engage with information by thinking about its meaning or connecting it to what we already know, the more likely we are to remember it. This article explores how the way we process information affects memory, and what that means for learning, decision-making, and everyday life.

Why do we forget information that we just looked up?

In the age of constant connectivity, we’ve become increasingly reliant on search engines to access information. The Google Effect, also known as digital amnesia, refers to our tendency to forget information that we know we can easily look up online. This article explores how our growing dependence on technology is reshaping the way we store and recall knowledge.