I wrote this “Process at Play” series for my Psychology of Digital Media class in the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington.
July 2010
Primacy Effect on Impression Formation
Definition of Primacy Effect: “Our tendency to attach more importance to the initial information that we learn about a person.” (Passer and Smith, 2009).
The primacy effect is a sub-component to the broader serial position effect, introduced by the German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus, which describes how people remember items in a list differently based on their position in the list. Therefore, the primacy effect is when people remember the items at the beginning of the list more accurately than others. The recency effect, another sub-component of the serial position effect, is when people remember items at the end of the list more accurately than others.
Some explain that the primacy effect occurs because the brain is less “crowded” with information at the beginning of the list, and is therefore better able to store it in long term memory.
The primacy effect comes into play importantly in first impressions, as studied by Solomon Asch in the 1940’s. Asch’s experiment included showing people one of the two following lists, and then asking them to rate the person being described.
(1) Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent.
(2) Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious.
Asch found that when describing a person with these lists of adjectives, the first adjectives had more impact than others. “When adjectives with more positive meaning were given first followed by words with less positive meaning, the participants tended to rate that person more positively; but when the order was reversed, participants tended to judge that person less positively” (Lee, 2010).
The primacy effect is especially powerful because new information presented after a first impression has to compete with the fact that (1) people devote less attention to secondary information and (2) people use secondary information to continue to form their opinions already based on the primary information (Passer and Smith, 2009).
Process at Play: User Reviews
Bejeweled Blitz, created by Popcap Games, is one of the most popular games played on Facebook, with over 10 million unique monthly active users.
Reviews posted on the Facebook page for the Bejeweled Blitz game are both included on the review page and broadcast to the reviewers Facebook feed, potentially impacting the opinions of millions of people depending on what order the review is positioned on the page.
The primacy effect is especially applicable to the online environment as more consumers are looking to the internet to form their opinions of products. Given the demand and ability of consumers to publish user-generated content, it is impossible for companies to control the information consumers are receiving about their products. The primacy effect calls for companies to participate in the online conversations about their products and services.
Companies can take some actions to combat the primacy effect when it comes to their own content. For example, the power of user reviews in triggering the primacy effect is limited to where the user reviews are located on a site. Using the Bejeweled Blitz Facebook page as an example, the aggregated score of 4.2 out of 5 stars is front and center on the first page that users will see. Players are more likely to see this information first versus the more detailed reviews which are buried in a tab at the top of the screen.
Additionally, it is important for companies to understand the negative comments are often fleeting on the internet. Taking action on negative comments should happen when they are occurring en masse. For example, the one negative review on the reviews page for Bejeweled Blitz (seen on the previous page) was followed by many 5-star reviews.
Primacy Effect and Video Games
The primacy effect impacts how players feel about your games based on the first information they see about the game online or hear in person.
- Understand where players are obtaining information about the game, both inside and outside of Facebook.
- Monitor these sources of information for reoccurring themes.
- Consider asking players to leave positive reviews where appropriate.
Everything written here (and on this site) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, except where otherwise noted. A simple mention of “original work by Allison Bilas” and a link back to the original page it came from is all I require for attribution.
