Serial position effect: meaning & examples

Introduction

'First impressions count' and 'close with a bang'. They are clichés, but they do possess a kernel of truth! They have everything to do with the serial position effect or serial-position effect. Read how this bias works, what it means for you and most importantly, take advantage of it!

What is the serial position effect?

The serial position effect causes us to remember information at the beginning or end of a sequence better than information in the middle (Ebbinghaus, 1885).

The position of certain information in a sequence determines how well the information is remembered by our brain when the serial position effect comes into play. The serial position effect affects sequences of information. What turns out? The first and last items in a sequence are remembered better than items in the middle.

How does the serial position effect occur?

The serial position effect is caused by two other biases (Ebbinghaus, 1885): the recency effect and the primacy effect. The primacy effect says that we mainly remember items we heard about first and the recency effect says that we mainly remember items we heard about most recently (Cherry, 2020).

The items at the front of the sequence get a lot of attention; the items at the back of the sequence are the freshest in our memory. The very first items we store in our long-term memory. The recent items we store in our short-term memory. If they are there long enough, they move to our long-term memory (McLeod, 2017). So, in summary, we remember the very first and the very last information better.

Examples in practice

• You ask ChatGPT for some ideas for your new article. He comes up with a list of good topics. However, you only remember the first and last two ideas, when the best idea might have been in the middle.
• You go to the supermarket to buy groceries for the free mibo. Your employees have listed what you need to bring. When you get back, however, you find out that you forgot some products. These were listed in between... So you have to go back again!
• There is a nasty incident at work. You remember who started it and what they said and how it ended. But the how or what and in what order was spoken in between, of that you have forgotten the exact details.
• In a restaurant, you ate a 5-course meal. You were not so pleased with courses 3 and 4, but the dessert was great. When asked afterwards if you enjoyed your meal, you will answer more positively because you mainly remember the dessert and the first two successful courses.

Using the serial position effect to your advantage

When we know that this is how our brain works and we need to remember a series of important information, we can take this into account. You also notice the serial position effect with clients. This is how you take advantage of it:

• Make sure you are at the top of Google;).
• State your main message at the beginning of your ad.
• Optimal position: place the information most important to remember or the products you prefer to sell at the front or back of a brochure / page / shelf / search results list.
• Change the position of a row of information or products frequently, so that all information is front and back once, and all products are consciously seen by the customer.
• Add only application information that is relevant to the task, because if there is too much information, the intermediate information will not be remembered anyway.
• Build in filters in a webshop so that visitors are not shown the entire assortment but only what is relevant to them. This way, they will more easily remember the items they liked and will be more likely to make a purchase (Wong, 2020).
• End a speech or (sales) talk with a summary of the main points.

Resources

Cherry, K. (2020). "What is the Recency Effect?" Verywell Mind.

Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). "Memory; a contribution to experimental psychology".

McLeod, S. (2017). "Multi store model of memory."Simply Psychology.

Wong, E. (2020). "Serial position effect: How to create better user interfaces." The Interaction Design Foundation.