Order in Choice: Effects of Serial Position on Preferences

When choice options are sampled one-at-a-time in a sequence and the chooser makes a single end-of-sequence choice of the best option in the choice set, which location in the sequence is most often chosen? We report on one large-scale experiment that assessed preferences in choice sets of 2, 3, 4, or 5, and found a large primacy effect such that the first option had a large advantage in the endof-sequence choice. We also found that sophisticated participants, , showed a recency effect for the longer sequences. We conclude with a process model to explain the results we obtained.