The Recency Effect

The Recency Effect

The recency effect is the advantage that goes to whatever comes last in a sequence. It tends to appear when the run of options is long, when each is judged one after another, and when the judges are experts. In short lists and quick, low-information choices, the first option usually wins instead.

What it is

Wändi Bruine de Bruin studied the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005 and found that ratings rose with each later slot in the running order, whether juries scored at the end of the sequence or after each song. The same rising pattern appeared in World and European figure skating contests.

Antonia Mantonakis and colleagues reported in Psychological Science in 2009 a tasting in which people sampled two, three, four or five wines in sequence and chose their favourite. The first wine had a large advantage overall, but participants who knew a lot about wine showed a pull towards the last glass in the longer sequences.

Menus show both ends at work. In 2011 Eran Dayan and Maya Bar-Hillel moved items around menus, in a laboratory study with 240 students and in a Tel Aviv café where they counted 951 orders over 15 days. Items at the beginning or the end of their category were up to twice as popular as the same items in the middle.

The contrast is primacy. In New York City's 1998 Democratic primaries, Jonathan Koppell and Jennifer Steen found candidates won a larger share when listed first in 71 of 79 contests, and in seven the advantage exceeded the winner's margin. Ballots are read in one glance, which favours the first name; long sequences scored item by item favour the last.

In effect

Count the options before trusting your choice. With two or three, expect the first to be favoured; with a long run judged one at a time, as in a tasting flight or a talent contest, expect the last. Either way the middle gets the least attention, so give it a second look.

What it does not say

It does not say the last option always wins. Mantonakis found a large first-position advantage overall, with recency only among knowledgeable tasters in longer sets. In the café study only 20 of about 60 items were moved, only soft drinks showed a difference large enough to rule out chance at category level, and orders placed without looking at the menu were not recorded. Dana Carney and Mahzarin Banaji noted in 2012 that research on order had produced inconsistent results. These studies do not settle the mechanism, and several were read at abstract level.

Sources

  1. Bruine de Bruin, W. (2005). Acta Psychologica, 118(3), 245-260. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2004.08.005.
  2. Mantonakis, A., Rodero, P., Lesschaeve, I., & Hastie, R. (2009). Psychological Science, 20(11), 1309-1312. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02453.x.
  3. Dayan, E., & Bar-Hillel, M. (2011). Judgment and Decision Making, 6(4), 333-342. doi:10.1017/S1930297500001947.
  4. Koppell, J. G. S., & Steen, J. A. (2004). The Journal of Politics, 66(1), 267-281. doi:10.1046/j.1468-2508.2004.00151.x.
  5. Carney, D. R., & Banaji, M. R. (2012). PLoS ONE, 7(6), e35088. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035088.