Neuroscience
Here's a tip - if you're applying for a new job or place at university, try to be the last one interviewed. Research suggests that when people judge successive performances, they tend to give progressively higher ratings to later performers.
Wandi Bruine de Bruin at the University of Technology in Holland checked back through scores given over 47 editions of the Eurovision Song Contest from 1957-2003. Over that time the scoring system has varied, sometimes each nation's judges have scored every song at the end of the contest; other years they scored songs one-at-a-time, after each performance. Regardless of the scoring system, and controlling for known national biases and other confounds, the later a singer appeared in the contest, the higher the score they tended to receive. Don't tell Terry.
de Bruin then analysed scores given during past European and World Figure Skating Championships. Again, despite skaters being scored one-at-a-time, those performing later tended to receive higher ratings. Moreover, judges tended to give later performers more extreme scores - perhaps because they gave early performers medium scores in the absence of anything to compare them by.
So why do judges give later performers higher scores? "Watching a sequence of performances, each new one may become more salient...positive features may have received more attention than shared ones, and made candidates seem better than earlier ones", de Bruin suggested. Of course it's possible that later performers were actually better - perhaps spurred on by the earlier performances. Either way, de Bruin, said, performers and candidates awaiting their turn should keep in mind "The Drifters' 1961 hit song - 'save the last dance for me'".
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de Bruin, W.B. (2005). Save the last dance for me: unwanted serial position effects in jury evaluations. Acta Psychologica, 118, 245-260.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Last but definitely not least
Here's a tip - if you're applying for a new job or place at university, try to be the last one interviewed. Research suggests that when people judge successive performances, they tend to give progressively higher ratings to later performers.
Wandi Bruine de Bruin at the University of Technology in Holland checked back through scores given over 47 editions of the Eurovision Song Contest from 1957-2003. Over that time the scoring system has varied, sometimes each nation's judges have scored every song at the end of the contest; other years they scored songs one-at-a-time, after each performance. Regardless of the scoring system, and controlling for known national biases and other confounds, the later a singer appeared in the contest, the higher the score they tended to receive. Don't tell Terry.
de Bruin then analysed scores given during past European and World Figure Skating Championships. Again, despite skaters being scored one-at-a-time, those performing later tended to receive higher ratings. Moreover, judges tended to give later performers more extreme scores - perhaps because they gave early performers medium scores in the absence of anything to compare them by.
So why do judges give later performers higher scores? "Watching a sequence of performances, each new one may become more salient...positive features may have received more attention than shared ones, and made candidates seem better than earlier ones", de Bruin suggested. Of course it's possible that later performers were actually better - perhaps spurred on by the earlier performances. Either way, de Bruin, said, performers and candidates awaiting their turn should keep in mind "The Drifters' 1961 hit song - 'save the last dance for me'".
________________________________
de Bruin, W.B. (2005). Save the last dance for me: unwanted serial position effects in jury evaluations. Acta Psychologica, 118, 245-260.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- People Prefer The Middle Option
When objects are arranged in an array from left to right, the central item jumps up and down and calls out to you "Pick me, pick me!" Well, not literally, but in a new study psychologists have provided further evidence for what's called the "Centre...
- Does Greater Competition Improve Performance Or Increase Cheating?
What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more? Christiane Schwieren and Doris Weichselbaumer found out...
- The Psychology Of Choking Under Pressure
Once anxiety extends its tendrils into the sportsman or woman's mind, the results can be disastrous. But what causes this choking under pressure? There are two rival theories - one states that anxiety is so distracting it stops performers from being...
- Why It's Best Not To Expect The Worst
Go through life expecting the worst and then you’ll never be disappointed. And on those rare occasions when something goes right for you, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It sounds like a sensible philosophy, but according to Margaret Marshall and...
- Abstract Of The Day: Rater Training And The Nih Stroke Scale (nihss)
Josephson SA, Hills NK, & Johnston SC (2006). NIH Stroke Scale reliability in ratings from a large sample of clinicians.. Cerebrovascular Disorders,, 22(5-6), 389-395 Objective: The NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is widely used in stroke clinical care and...