Primacy Effect Essay
There seems to be a notion that the professor makes a class great. Students who do not enjoy a particular subject can at least find a class engaging with the right kind of professor. In universities and colleges across the nation students have caught onto a system in which they can review professors and release these reviews to help future students make judgments and decisions of what classes to take with which professors. There are universal platforms, like RateMyProfessor.com as well as more school-specific platforms that provide such services. While these platforms assist countless numbers of students every semester, there are also some dangerous social traps that users of such services fall into. It is common knowledge that first impressions
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and the impressions friends have on strangers can have influence on the impressions of a person. A myriad of factors like appearance, race, and socioeconomic background can having lasting effects that sometimes resulted in heavily biased or skewed perceptions. All of the research that has been done has led us to understand that the impact of something that is increasingly seen as arbitrary, like gender, and the presentation of impression, especially in terms of order, can have a large impact of the judgements people make.
Research by Mattarozzi et al. (2015) showed that a number of factors, including facial appearance, had strong impact on the way that people viewed the personality of that person. To interpret these findings a bit more holistically, Mattarozzi et al. asserted that these findings were exemplary of physical first impression impacting the judgements of character. Of course, there is a concern that besides physical appearance there was nothing for the participants to make judgements based off of. Nonetheless, the judgements developed were elaborate and long lasting. The researchers also found effects between these first impressions and gender. The found that judgements of female faces were more polar, the negative were significantly more negative and the positive were significantly more positive, than that of males. Participants also rated their confidence in their first-impression based judgements of females as higher than the confidence they had in their judgements of males. Such findings contribute to thought of gender inequality within judgements.
One thing that Mattarozzi et al.
seemed to come into contact with but did not discuss is a primacy effect. Primacy effect can be be described as a lasting effect on impression by a first encounter. Alternatively, there also exists evidence of recency effect, or lasting effects on impression by the most recent encounter. There have been countless numbers of studies done assessing primacy effects, recency effects, and the two together. While the findings are scattered across the board, with some studies claiming primacy effects are more prevalent than recency effects and other studies claiming the contrary. The differences in such findings can be attributed to the context the effects were studied in, perhaps introducing some outside variables that create interaction effects. For the purposes of our study, we turned to literature that focused on the effects in evaluations and judgements of others. One such a study, conducted by Hennessy et al. (2016) tried to measure the effects of primacy and recency effects in judgements of hazardous drivers. They found that participants who were shown videos of car accidents where the accident happens in the beginning of the video (primacy) were more likely to judge the driver harshly as opposed a collision at the end of the video (recency.) Such findings suggests that the impressions the beginning of some correspondence resonate with final judgements more than impressions are the end of a
correspondence.
With some understanding of the nature of gender and primacy effects, we turned to look at the nature of evaluations and gender judgements of professors. A study conducted by Davison and Price (2009) analyzed the methods involved with rating professors and conducted a study where they asked students to answer a series of questions describing the nature of professor rating website, such as RateMyProfessor.com, in their personal experience. Many students answered that the nature of the website was to help them select courses with particular professors.Not out of character for most class-seeking college students was the finding that the number one feature students made decisions based on was professor easiness. The comments of easiness were found to be made more often about female professors than male professors, contributing to the reoccurring theme of gender as highly involved in social impressions. Another study, conducted by Scherr (2013) validated these findings and also found that even a few singled out comments can strongly influence the impressions users of professor evaluating services have of professors and classes, even though the are not significantly representative of either thing.
Turning to Hameed et al. (2014) we are provided of a more holistic approach to understand gender in professor evaluations. They found, in line with the studies discussed above, that in judgements of professors and professors, the gender of the student or participant did not impact the outcome of the evaluations. There were, however, differences across the gender of the professor.
In summary, research has found that the primacy effect and recency effects often compete with each other, but in terms evaluations the primacy effect of a first impression is more powerful than a recency effect. Many studies pointed to judgements being arbitrary, yet people having high confidence in them. For females in particular, the confidence of judgements based on first impressions is high. Such gender differences are prevalent throughout a wide variety of phenomenons, including the judgement of professors on online databases. of first impressions color exposure has a variety of effects on different tasks. Combining the findings of primacy effect, judgement of gender differences, and the nature of professor evaluations, we decided to grasp a broader understanding for first impression and gender on evaluations. In particular we worked to asses primacy or recency effects, and female or male professors on judgements made after reading professor evaluations, as the gender distinction and primacy effect recency effect distinction has shown promising results in the literature. Our goal was to see if we could find effects of professor gender and positions of heavily charged reviews on the likelihood that a student will not want to take a class with that professor. We decided to create a survey that would present participants with four conditions, exploring the main effects and interactions between the positions of a charged review in an evaluation, in our case negatively charged reviews, and professor gender, and then ask students to reflect on the professor. Based off of our exploration of previously published literature, we understood that the primacy effect has proven to sho2 lasting impacting on the impression people have of evaluative judgements. We also found data supporting gender inequality especially in the sphere of academia, where females are often viewed as more easy and polarized as opposed to males. Thus, we hypothesized having negative reviews first would resonate with participants and therefore lead to an increased likelihood that a student will not take a class with the professor and that female professors, who we assumed are generally perceived as less-desirable than male professors, would demonstrate this effect to a higher degree than male professors.
and the impressions friends have on strangers can have influence on the impressions of a person. A myriad of factors like appearance, race, and socioeconomic background can having lasting effects that sometimes resulted in heavily biased or skewed perceptions. All of the research that has been done has led us to understand that the impact of something that is increasingly seen as arbitrary, like gender, and the presentation of impression, especially in terms of order, can have a large impact of the judgements people make.
Research by Mattarozzi et al. (2015) showed that a number of factors, including facial appearance, had strong impact on the way that people viewed the personality of that person. To interpret these findings a bit more holistically, Mattarozzi et al. asserted that these findings were exemplary of physical first impression impacting the judgements of character. Of course, there is a concern that besides physical appearance there was nothing for the participants to make judgements based off of. Nonetheless, the judgements developed were elaborate and long lasting. The researchers also found effects between these first impressions and gender. The found that judgements of female faces were more polar, the negative were significantly more negative and the positive were significantly more positive, than that of males. Participants also rated their confidence in their first-impression based judgements of females as higher than the confidence they had in their judgements of males. Such findings contribute to thought of gender inequality within judgements.
One thing that Mattarozzi et al.
seemed to come into contact with but did not discuss is a primacy effect. Primacy effect can be be described as a lasting effect on impression by a first encounter. Alternatively, there also exists evidence of recency effect, or lasting effects on impression by the most recent encounter. There have been countless numbers of studies done assessing primacy effects, recency effects, and the two together. While the findings are scattered across the board, with some studies claiming primacy effects are more prevalent than recency effects and other studies claiming the contrary. The differences in such findings can be attributed to the context the effects were studied in, perhaps introducing some outside variables that create interaction effects. For the purposes of our study, we turned to literature that focused on the effects in evaluations and judgements of others. One such a study, conducted by Hennessy et al. (2016) tried to measure the effects of primacy and recency effects in judgements of hazardous drivers. They found that participants who were shown videos of car accidents where the accident happens in the beginning of the video (primacy) were more likely to judge the driver harshly as opposed a collision at the end of the video (recency.) Such findings suggests that the impressions the beginning of some correspondence resonate with final judgements more than impressions are the end of a
correspondence.
With some understanding of the nature of gender and primacy effects, we turned to look at the nature of evaluations and gender judgements of professors. A study conducted by Davison and Price (2009) analyzed the methods involved with rating professors and conducted a study where they asked students to answer a series of questions describing the nature of professor rating website, such as RateMyProfessor.com, in their personal experience. Many students answered that the nature of the website was to help them select courses with particular professors.Not out of character for most class-seeking college students was the finding that the number one feature students made decisions based on was professor easiness. The comments of easiness were found to be made more often about female professors than male professors, contributing to the reoccurring theme of gender as highly involved in social impressions. Another study, conducted by Scherr (2013) validated these findings and also found that even a few singled out comments can strongly influence the impressions users of professor evaluating services have of professors and classes, even though the are not significantly representative of either thing.
Turning to Hameed et al. (2014) we are provided of a more holistic approach to understand gender in professor evaluations. They found, in line with the studies discussed above, that in judgements of professors and professors, the gender of the student or participant did not impact the outcome of the evaluations. There were, however, differences across the gender of the professor.
In summary, research has found that the primacy effect and recency effects often compete with each other, but in terms evaluations the primacy effect of a first impression is more powerful than a recency effect. Many studies pointed to judgements being arbitrary, yet people having high confidence in them. For females in particular, the confidence of judgements based on first impressions is high. Such gender differences are prevalent throughout a wide variety of phenomenons, including the judgement of professors on online databases. of first impressions color exposure has a variety of effects on different tasks. Combining the findings of primacy effect, judgement of gender differences, and the nature of professor evaluations, we decided to grasp a broader understanding for first impression and gender on evaluations. In particular we worked to asses primacy or recency effects, and female or male professors on judgements made after reading professor evaluations, as the gender distinction and primacy effect recency effect distinction has shown promising results in the literature. Our goal was to see if we could find effects of professor gender and positions of heavily charged reviews on the likelihood that a student will not want to take a class with that professor. We decided to create a survey that would present participants with four conditions, exploring the main effects and interactions between the positions of a charged review in an evaluation, in our case negatively charged reviews, and professor gender, and then ask students to reflect on the professor. Based off of our exploration of previously published literature, we understood that the primacy effect has proven to sho2 lasting impacting on the impression people have of evaluative judgements. We also found data supporting gender inequality especially in the sphere of academia, where females are often viewed as more easy and polarized as opposed to males. Thus, we hypothesized having negative reviews first would resonate with participants and therefore lead to an increased likelihood that a student will not take a class with the professor and that female professors, who we assumed are generally perceived as less-desirable than male professors, would demonstrate this effect to a higher degree than male professors.