The Primacy Effect Experiment

The aim of this experiment was to replicate the Primacy effect, which investigates the effects of ascending and descending performances on attributions of intellectual ability, illustrating that individuals’ perception of another individual is influenced by their first impression of that person to the detriment of all subsequent impressions. The design included independent groups, and the 46 participants over 16 years old (25 males and 21 females) were chosen through convenience sampling. The latter were required to answer a questionnaire after watching a video of a confederate answering cultural knowledge questions. Individuals completed either the control trial, in which the confederate would demonstrate a descending performance, or the experimental
Two identical series of adjectives describing a person, differing only in the order of succession of the latter, were read to the participants. Series A opened with qualities of high merit (intelligent, industrious) and proceeded to qualities possessing a dubious connotation (impulsive, stubborn, envious). This order was reversed in Series B. The first terms led the subject to form a general impression of the individual and thus affected the participant’s perception of the following adjectives (Asch,
Different participants were used in different conditions of the independent variable, so no individual was involved in both the declining test performance trial and the improving test performance trial. This design was employed because participants were not as likely to be affected by order effects, since they were only involved in one experimental condition. It also decreased some of the demand characteristics, since participants were less likely to try to guess the aim of the research, and change their natural way of reacting to the situation. The control trial required participants to rate the intellectual ability of a confederate answering, out of 15 cultural knowledge questions (See Appendix 6), the first 10 questions accurately but the last 5 wrong, while the experimental trial required participants to rate the intellectual ability of the confederate answering the first 5 questions wrong but the last 10 accurately. The independent variable consisted of the change in order of the accuracy of the answers, whereas the dependent variable was the attribution of intellectual ability to the confederate. Extraneous variables that researchers were able to control were the age of each participant, the presence of corrective visions, and hearing issues, the fluency in english of each participant, the standardized