I’m headed to Zihuatanejo, Mexico tonight at midnight to celebrate my 30th birthday! We (six of us) are staying at this gorgeous condo complex. I plan on reading, taking photos, drinking margaritas, laying in the sun and sleeping.

I wrote this “Process at Play” series for my Psychology of Digital Media class in the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington.

July 2010

Primacy Effect on Impression Formation

Definition of Primacy Effect: “Our tendency to attach more importance to the initial information that we learn about a person.” (Passer and Smith, 2009).

The primacy effect is a sub-component to the broader serial position effect, introduced by the German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus, which describes how people remember items in a list differently based on their position in the list. Therefore, the primacy effect is when people remember the items at the beginning of the list more accurately than others. The recency effect, another sub-component of the serial position effect, is when people remember items at the end of the list more accurately than others.

Some explain that the primacy effect occurs because the brain is less “crowded” with information at the beginning of the list, and is therefore better able to store it in long term memory.

The primacy effect comes into play importantly in first impressions, as studied by Solomon Asch in the 1940’s. Asch’s experiment included showing people one of the two following lists, and then asking them to rate the person being described.

(1) Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent.

(2) Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious.

Asch found that when describing a person with these lists of adjectives, the first adjectives had more impact than others. “When adjectives with more positive meaning were given first followed by words with less positive meaning, the participants tended to rate that person more positively; but when the order was reversed, participants tended to judge that person less positively” (Lee, 2010).

The primacy effect is especially powerful because new information presented after a first impression has to compete with the fact that (1) people devote less attention to secondary information and (2) people use secondary information to continue to form their opinions already based on the primary information (Passer and Smith, 2009).

Process at Play: User Reviews

Bejeweled Blitz, created by Popcap Games, is one of the most popular games played on Facebook, with over 10 million unique monthly active users.

Reviews posted on the Facebook page for the Bejeweled Blitz game are both included on the review page and broadcast to the reviewers Facebook feed, potentially impacting the opinions of millions of people depending on what order the review is positioned on the page.

The primacy effect is especially applicable to the online environment as more consumers are looking to the internet to form their opinions of products. Given the demand and ability of consumers to publish user-generated content, it is impossible for companies to control the information consumers are receiving about their products. The primacy effect calls for companies to participate in the online conversations about their products and services.

Companies can take some actions to combat the primacy effect when it comes to their own content. For example, the power of user reviews in triggering the primacy effect is limited to where the user reviews are located on a site. Using the Bejeweled Blitz Facebook page as an example, the aggregated score of 4.2 out of 5 stars is front and center on the first page that users will see. Players are more likely to see this information first versus the more detailed reviews which are buried in a tab at the top of the screen.

Additionally, it is important for companies to understand the negative comments are often fleeting on the internet. Taking action on negative comments should happen when they are occurring en masse. For example, the one negative review on the reviews page for Bejeweled Blitz (seen on the previous page) was followed by many 5-star reviews.

Primacy Effect and Video Games

The primacy effect impacts how players feel about your games based on the first information they see about the game online or hear in person.

• Understand where players are obtaining information about the game, both inside and outside of Facebook.
• Monitor these sources of information for reoccurring themes.
• Consider asking players to leave positive reviews where appropriate.

Everything written here (and on this site) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, except where otherwise noted. A simple mention of “original work by Allison Bilas” and a link back to the original page it came from is all I require for attribution.

Wow, where did July and August go? I definitely put my blog on the back burner this summer… I think part of the problem was that the template I was using required a certain sized photo for every post. That didn’t work for posting remotely or from a computer that didn’t have photo editing software. So, I changed it up yesterday and have a new template. The setup of the new template isn’t complete yet though, so suspend judgment. There’s supposed to be a really great gallery of photos down the side that I’m struggling with right now.

At any rate, I wanted to recap my summer. (Which is kind of appropriate because it’s been pouring rain the last two days, and it’s decidedly not summer anymore here in Seattle.) Here are some highlights:

• PopCap Internship: My 10-week internship with PopCap was great. I learned a lot and I left really excited about the coming together of my skills in consumer behavior research with social games. It’s an exciting time in the industry where everyone is trying to figure out how to do social games right. I appreciate PopCap’s approach, which is to create amazing content and then fill in some of the blanks through data analysis of, and, honestly, straight up intuition about, virality and monetization. I’m very much hoping to stay in video games after I graduate in March!

•  MCDM Classes: I took two classes this summer in the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program. I really love the MCDM and its contrast to the MBA program. The classes are at once practical and theoretical. I took two classes that parlayed beautifully with my internship and interest in gaming. They were (1) Psychology of Digital Media and (2) Evolutions and Trends in Digital Media. I’m hoping to post some of the reports and projects I did in these classes on here in the next month. Oh, and by the way, did I tell you that taking these two summer classes and a super heavy load last Spring is going to allow me to graduate early? Oh yes.

• Stephanie & Slade’s Wedding: I went to Utah back in late July for a wedding of a close friend, Stephanie. My history with Stephanie is a complicated one… she dated my little brother, so those of you who know that story can imagine that this trip was an emotional one. Stephanie is an incredible lady though, and I feel really lucky to be in her life. And, oh my god, the wedding was beautiful. It was held at the Alta Ski Resort. They were married on the porch of a lodge, with a huge mountain of green and granite behind them. Stunning.

• Wine Tasting in Yakima: Scott and I headed East with a group of MBA ladies to go wine tasting in Yakima. I really should do this more often… it was such a relaxed, fun time hopping from winery to winery. Lacey picked our route based on whether or not the wineries advertised they had dogs, so we got to meet some awesome ones. (In my next life I want to be a dog at a winery.)

• Bike Rides: I was pretty prolific on my bike this summer… in comparison to previous summer where I might have taken my bike out once or twice. I went on two long bike rides with Scott including the Burke Gilman Trail and Lake Washington Boulevard, which is shut down to cars on Sundays in the summer. Autumn and Jeremy also joined us  on our Lake Washington Boulevard ride. I have also been taking my bike to work, which is a quick 2-mile downhill ride on the way to work and a tough 2-mile climb back up the hill on my way home. I wish I were the type to continue riding my bike in the rain, but I’m just not tough enough for that!

• Seattle Tattoo Expo: I’m ready to get a tattoo. It’s been a long time coming, but I was inspired to get something in particular during my trip to Peru. So, I’ve been on the lookout for the right tattoo artist to design it. Tina Bufaro, where are you?! Tina did Scott’s work on his arm, and I’d love for her to do mine, but she’s seemingly out of town, or at least not answering phone calls, ever. I was hopeful that I would find someone at the Seattle Tattoo Expo, and I did. But he’s booked through October and then out of town until March/April. OYE! Someday the right combination will come together. Someday.

• Casual Connect Conference: I was really fortunate to be able to attend the Casual Connect Conference back in July. The conference brings together industry experts in everything outside of hard core gaming – so casual, social, and mobile games. The line-up was great… I learned a lot and was able to meet a lot of people in the industry.

• Scott’s Birthday: We celebrated Scott’s birthday by spending a really relaxed day around Capitol Hill. We went to the 12th Avenue street festival, bought some bike accessories at Velo, had a picnic and then laid in the park for hours and then went to the butcher for steak.

• Anniversary @ the Space Needle: We turned 3 this year and celebrated by having dinner at the top of the Space Needle. Neither Scott nor I had been to the restaurant part of the Space Needle in a long time, so we thought it’d be something very local and fun. And it was! (Scott read my vows to me afterward on the lookout deck… I need to keep track of everywhere he does this.)

After a hiatus last year while we were in Peru, we held our traditional July 4th party last night! I have to say it was a success and very fun to have our friends over.

Throwing parties is incredibly satisfying. My favorite finishing touches were (a) this balloon, (b) the flags I strapped to the deck railing and (c) the sweet tea and vodka drink.

After getting burned by EA’s $6.99 Sims iPhone game, I had vowed to never pay so much money for iPhone app again. (The game never worked. EA’s customer service told me I should take the matter up with iTunes.) And then Carcassone came out and was priced at $4.99. Reviews for the game were awesome. I resisted the urge until I found out my older sister was going to buy it and that we could play it together. Remotely. She lives in Lesotho. Yeah, that tiny country enveloped by South Africa. How awesome is technology that my sister and I can play a board game, on our phones, from different hemispheres of the world.

Heather won our game this afternoon. I’m pretty proud that I held my own though! At one point I had it tied. Heather is an expert Carcassone strategist!

In an effort to stop drinking mochas (calories and costs are too high), I’ve started ordering iced tea when I’m out and about. My favorite teas at local shops are Victrola’s black vanilla tea and Il Fornil’s jasmine tea. I’ve found near perfect substitutes for them (Vanilla Almond and Asian Jasmine White, respectively) at QFC made by The Republic of Tea. Both of these are really good hot…

I, um, had to look up how to make iced tea on the internet before I could make either of them into a cold version. Consider where I grew up when thinking about that one. The recipe I found first called for “family tea” bags, which was additionally confusing, so I looked that up too. There’s some debate as to whether or not family tea bags are indeed 3x or 4x the size of normal tea bags. In the end, I ended up using 4 regular bags to brew 32oz of tea. It makes a strong base that I store in a Nalgene bottle in the fridge. When I want a glass of team I mix the base with ice and more water and voila! Making iced tea is really easy.

p.s. I have also discovered that drinking iced tea is way more satisfying when it’s out of a straw.

Over the course of the last few years, our Baggu bags have slowly disappeared. I went back to their site today to replenish our supply, and found out that they have small ones now, perfect for carrying a lunch. This is perfect since I usually carry my lunch in the Baggu bag we have remaining anyway. The fact that they had the bag in a color called “Peacock” didn’t hurt the case to get one either.