Primacy and Recency Biases: Be First or Last

The Primacy and Recency Biases are good hacks for making information memorable and seemingly important.

Have you ever tried to remember a long list and only been able to recall the first and last few items? Or gone to a networking event and only remembered the first and last people you talked with? Those are perfect examples of primacy and recency in action.

Primacy and Recency Baises mean your first and last impressions matter most when networking.

WHAT ARE THE PRIMACY AND RECENCY BIASES?

“We give too much weight to information we’ve seen, heard, read or experienced most recently.”

- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

Primacy and recency biases are both part of the broader “Serial Position Effect,” which is the phenomenon that different items in a series are remembered better or worse depending on their position in that series.

Specifically:

• Primacy Bias is the empirical phenomenon that you remember the first items in a list better than the middle ones.
• Recency Bias is the phenomenon that you remember more recent information better than older information. When information is presented in a series, the last items in that series are more “recent” so you remember them better. As Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explain in Nudge: “[R]ecent events have a greater impact on our behavior, and on our fears, than earlier ones.”

So if you combine primacy and recency bias, you can see that information at the beginning and end will be remembered best.

EXAMPLES OF THE PRIMACY AND RECENCY BIASES

Some illustrative examples of these persuasive biases are:

• Candidates for a job have a higher chance of being remembered (…and hired) if they are the first or last interviewee.
• You are more likely to remember the first and last speakers at a conference.
• Students remember information in the first and last five minutes of a lecture better than the middle.
• Primacy and recency also mess with your perception of the world. For example, when considering possible long-term trends in global temperature changes, your brain will consider recent weather as the relevant baseline, rather than more representative, long-term periods.
• Recency also explains the hedonic treadmill (aka, the tendency for humans to quickly adapt to improved levels of happiness, wealth, etc., causing you to continually desire more). Your brain is more likely to compare your life to your life last month than your life five years ago. As a result, you’ll overlook longer improvements and be dissatisfied with your current state.

Primacy and Recency Baises mean that information at the beginning and end of a presentation will stick better than information in the middle.

HOW YOU WILL LEVERAGE PRIMACY AND RECENCY

• Copywriting/Sales — Present your product/service first in a comparison. Present its positive attributes first.
• Negotiations — Make your strongest arguments first and last in a negotiation. If you acknowledge any weaknesses, bury them in the middle of the conversation.
• Interviews — If you want to increase your odds of getting hired, try to be the first or last candidate interviewed.
• Networking — Don’t worry so much about what you say in the middle of a conversation at a networking event. Thanks to primacy and recency, what you say at the beginning and end of an interaction matter more. And you can set yourself up well by having scripted intros/outros.
• Presentations — Put the punchline or most significant information at the beginning and end of a presentation.
• Yourself — When learning new information, if you are struggling with a particular topic, start the next learning session with that hard topic. Also, consider ending any learning session by returning to any concepts you found difficult.

How have you leveraged the primacy and recency biases or seen them used by others? Share your expertise in the comments!

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