Wine Tasting and the Serial Position Effect
Going wine tasting has always been an activity I look forward to. From the natural beauty of the vineyards to the human craftsmanship, it connects me to nature and I get to experience the collective work of those involved in its creation. One taste after another, I slowly pick out the different elements of each wine and learn about my favorite varietals. Although I’m not the most knowledgeable, I can at least tell you what I like and don’t like. Or can I? As a behavioral scientist, I should be the first to know that context plays a huge factor in judgment and decision-making. Do I really think that one wine is my favorite, or is it just my favorite in the moment?
In one particular experiment, researcher Antonia Mantonakis and colleagues told participants that they would be participating in a study of “attitudes and values towards wine”. They were told that they would taste locally produced wines and led to believe that it would different samples of one grape varietal.
Participants were assigned to a sequence of either two, three, four, or five samples and then asked which one of all they tasted were their favorite. For simplicity, let’s focus on the three and four-sequence groups—take a look at the percent chosen as their favorite below.
As you can see, there seems to be a primacy effect for the three-sequence tasting (e.g., a large percentage of participants chose the first wine as their favorite) and both primacy and recency effects for the four-sequence tasting (e.g., larger percentages of participants choosing the first and last wine as their favorite).
So, there’s a serial position effect where the position of the information in a sequence affects our judgment, but what if the first and last wine were really that much better? Well, there’s one more important detail about all of these tastings. They were not different samples of the same grape varietal; they were actually all the same exact wine!
As you may have guessed, this phenomenon is not exclusive to wine tasting. The serial position effect unfolds all around us in many different contexts. By understanding this cognitive quirk, businesses can better reach and engage their customers, such as by placing the more important information at the beginning or the end of a communication or by ensuring a high customer experience by beginning and, perhaps more importantly, ending on a high note.