Sometimes, cognitive biases are so obvious, it seems that they require no explanation.
Primacy effect is the tendency for people to prioritize the first items in a list. This tendency is not so bad when we’re talking about a list that’s numerically ordered—your favorite 50 songs, for instance—but it poses an issue when the list is ordered in such a way that order confers no importance.
Alphabetical lists, for instance.
I suffer the primacy effect with my guitar tabs app. The app very sensibly saves tabs in alphabetical order, beginning with numbered tabs, such as “16 Military Wives” and “7&7.” I can tell you these songs without referencing my phone because I see those song tabs all the time. Every time I open the app, in fact!
(I should point out that I’m also suffering from a familiarity bias in the example above.)
Taylor Coe 