Primacy versus Recency in Retention of Information and Opinion Change

Abstract

Summary The predictive validity of three hypotheses concerned with the relative influence of the presentation order of opposed persuasive communications was investigated. Absorbed from the parallel and complementary research tradition of the serial position effect, an area of considerably greater theoretical closure than that exhibited in the realm of the primacy recency phenomenon, these propositions allowed for the postulation of unambiguous and opposed predictions of order effects. Consistent with a good deal of previous research, this study, which employed 88 undergraduate men and women students of a large Midwestern university as Ss, provided considerable empirical support for the attention decrement hypothesis, with a recency effect in attitude change demonstrated by Ss in conditions fostering the continued attention to the research materials. Differential patterns of attitude change and retention suggest a hierarchical connotative-denotative memory structure hypothesis.

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