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100 Things You Should Know About People: #45 — You Choose (And Vote For) The First One On The List

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It’s almost election time here in the USA, and there are many hotly contested elections at local, state, and national levels. Who will you vote for? According to the research, you are likely to vote for the first person that appears on the ballot!

The order effect — In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?, I write about the “order effect”. You go to a website to buy a tent for camping. You answer some questions about the type of camping you plan to do. The site then recommends four tents that best match your use, and compares the tents based on 10 attributes (how waterproof they are, how much they weigh, how much air ventilation they have, and so on). Two of the tents are “best buys” for the attributes that are important to you. Which tent will you buy?

Order effect at websites –– Felfernig (2007) set up a research study to find out. Even though there were 10 attributes that the tents were compared on, participants focused only on two or three attributes. The researchers varied the order in which the tents appeared on the page: first, second, third, or fourth. It turns out that the most important attribute was not whether the tent was waterproof or if it had plenty of air ventilation. The most important attribute was the order in which the tents appeared on the page! Participants disregarded attributes and simply picked whichever tent was the first one to show. People picked the first tent 2.5 times more than any other. They chose the first tent 200 times; they chose the other three tents (combined) only 60 times. This is an example of the order effect.

We rationalize the choice — The participants explained their choice, however, based on the logical decisions they thought they were making. For example, they explained the choice of tent #1 by saying, “This tent is the most waterproof.” They thought they were weighing all the attributes of all the tents, but in reality they were considering only a few attributes, and even those attributes didn’t matter. All that mattered was an unconscious reaction to which tent showed up first.

The first name on the ballot – According to research by Marc Meredith and Yuvall Salant, the same order effect influences who you vote for. In a wide range of elections, and with order randomized for different elections, Meredith and Salant found that in one out of every 10 elections, the first name on the ballot will win just because it’s first. They also calculated that being in the middle of the list lowers your chance of winning by 2.5 percentage points.

So which position candidate are you going to vote for!

Thanks to the blog  for drawing my attention to this research.

For more information on the Meredith and Sulant research: 

For the tent research:

Felfernig, A., g. Friedrich, B. Gula, M. Hitz, T. Kruggel, G. Leitner, R. Melcher, D. Riepan, S. Strauss, E. Teppan, and O. Vitouch. 2007. Persuasive recommendation: Serial position effects in knowledge-based recommender systems. In Persuasive Technology, Second International Conference on Persuasive Technology. New York: Springer.

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10 responses to “100 Things You Should Know About People: #45 — You Choose (And Vote For) The First One On The List”

  1. Marco Avatar

    This article has been translated in Italian here: http://bit.ly/biwFLo

  2. […] > Show products from most to least expensive. Read more: here […]

  3. home teater Avatar

    Superb write-up. Thanks.

  4. Jelzmar Avatar

    When I vote, I know who I’m voting for before I walk in to place my vote. Now I’m feeling like my votes are wasted, because people just choose by position.

  5. TaVe Avatar
    TaVe

    Just 2 days ago, I was watching a speed-run of a video game. When I watched the same run next to another person’s speed-run, I noticed I was sort-of rooting for the person I saw 1st claiming they were better overall even though they did it slower. And I knew it was because I saw their video 1st. >.<
    My brother had similar feelings saying that he wanted the 1st person to do another speed-run. When I asked him why he cared and if it had anything to do with the fact that he saw their clip 1st, he seemed to agree that it was just the order effect.

  6. […] This effect was termed an order effect: the first name on the ballot is going to win in one out of ten elections. The same rule applies when you pick goods from a list during online shopping: the order in which the item appears on the page turns out to be more important than the actual quality of the item. […]

  7. […] This effect was termed an order effect: the first name on the ballot is going to win in one out of ten elections. The same rule applies when you pick goods from a list during online shopping: the order in which the item appears on the page turns out to be more important than the actual quality of the item. […]

  8. […] This effect was termed an order effect: the first name on the ballot is going to win in one out of ten elections. The same rule applies when you pick goods from a list during online shopping: the order in which the item appears on the page turns out to be more important than the actual quality of the item. […]

  9. […] This effect was termed an order effect: the first name on the ballot is going to win in one out of ten elections. The same rule applies when you pick goods from a list during online shopping: the order in which the item appears on the page turns out to be more important than the actual quality of the item. […]

  10. […] according to researchis perceived as more important than the quality of the item when the item is on the page. During an […]

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