Premium
Does Presentation Order Impact Choice After Delay?
Author(s) -
Berger Jonah
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12205
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , identification (biology) , position (finance) , metric (unit) , citation , order (exchange) , computer science , cognitive psychology , serial position effect , psychology , data science , economics , operations management , medicine , world wide web , botany , free recall , recall , finance , radiology , biology
Options are often presented incidentally in a sequence, but does serial position impact choice after delay, and if so, how? We address this question in a consequential real‐world choice domain. Using 25 years of citation data, and a unique identification strategy, we examine the relationship between article order (i.e., position in a journal issue) and citation count. Results indicate that mere serial position affects the prominence that research achieves: Earlier‐listed articles receive more citations. Furthermore, our identification strategy allows us to cast doubt on alternative explanations (i.e., editorial placement) and instead indicate that the effect is driven by psychological processes of attention and memory. These findings deepen the understanding of how presentation order impacts choice, suggest that subtle presentation factors can bias an important scientific metric, and shed light on how psychological processes shape collective outcomes.