Serial Position Effect
Items at the beginning and end of a list are recalled better than items in the middle.
The serial position effect, a term coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus, refers to the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The increased recall for the first items is called the primacy effect, and the increased recall for the last items is called the recency effect. This affects jury decision-making, hiring interviews, and any situation where items are evaluated sequentially.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Job Interview Order Job interview candidates who go first or last are rated more favorably than candidates interviewed in the middle of the day.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
Mark is reviewing a list of chores his spouse gave him. He completes the first task and the last one, but has to check the list again for the tasks in the middle.
While browsing a playlist, Sam consistently favored the first song and the last song on the list when deciding what to listen to, often skipping over the tracks in between.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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