The primacy effect can play a big part in the degree to which conspiracy theories take root. In many cases, conspiracy theories arise so quickly and people are exposed to them faster than the arguments  against them can be spread. To make the problem worse, conspiracy theories are often interesting and controversial, so they grab even more attention, making them more convincing.  

The problem of the primacy effect and conspiracy theories

Information shown in the beginning of something has a greater affect than information revealed later. Embodied by the quote "put your best foot forward."

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

When a sensory experience (hearing a word/phrase, or seeing a picture), triggers an associational response that effects your decision making afterwards. The presentation of some stimuli affects someones response to the presentation of a following one.

Priming effect

Aronson, Elliot, and Joshua Aronson. The Social Animal. Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning, 2018.

The Social Animal

The presentation of some stimulus affects how someone perceives/reacts to the presentation of a following one because the first one was similar in some way to the latter (one does not need to remember the previous or be conscious of its affects for there to be an affect).

Repetition Priming 

Nodes are activated when nodes with links to them (or close to them) are activated. The nearby nodes are primed to be retrieved by memory more easily.

Spreading activation

The Primacy Effect

Priming has been used in the realms of psychology as a way to alter people's behaviors or performance. It can be overt (supraliminal) or covert (subliminal). A subsequent behavior, which is a result of the priming, occurs typically without conscious awareness. In the field of microtask crowdsourcing, multiple types of primes have been used to increase and alter people's performance.

Priming to Increase Performance in Microtask Crowdsourcing

Participants were given a headline that did not relate to COVID-19, and they were asked to rate its accuracy. The prompt was essentially priming the participants with the concept of accuracy.

COVID-19 Misinformation Prompt Toolkit: Evaluation Prompt

When people consider a value and then have to estimate an unknown quantity. The estimated number will stay close to original number considered, whether or not the original number is related to the unknown quantity. There is debate on whether the effect is an adjustment heuristic (Tversky), an example of priming (Kahneman), or both.

Anchoring

The common association between 'peanut butter' and 'jelly' serves as an example of priming. When an individual is prompted with the term 'peanut butter,' the concept of 'jelly' is primed and becomes more easily retrievable. This occurs because of the strong, frequently reinforced link between these two concepts within a person's semantic network.

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