Obscure Theory Fells a Mayor

One day after his testimony helped change the face of politics in Compton, what surprised Ohio State University professor Jon Krosnick most?

1) His daughter enjoyed her tennis lesson.

2) He managed to organize his study.

3) He learned that, 2,000 miles away, his testimony unseated one mayor and reinstalled another.

If you picked tennis lesson, you’re wrong.

But don’t despair, it’s the “primacy effect” at work. The phenomenon influences the way we answer test questions, pick our favorite soft drinks and, yes, even vote, Krosnick said in a telephone interview Saturday.

The idea is simply this: When asked to select from a list of choices, people tend to favor those choices at the top of the list.

The concept is familiar to social scientists, pollsters and anyone who always answers “heads” when asked to call a coin toss. It was vaulted from ivory-tower obscurity into the harsh glare of the political arena Friday.

Ruling in a trial over last June’s election in Compton, Superior Court Judge Judith Chirlin found that the primacy effect played a major role in the outcome.

She said City Clerk Charles Davis violated the law when he failed to request a randomized alphabet from the California secretary of state to determine the order of candidates’ names on the general election ballot.

Davis said he used a list that had been generated for the primary election. As a result, Perrodin’s name was first on the ballot.

Testifying for losing incumbent Omar Bradley, Krosnick had calculated that the error cost the mayor at least 306 votes.

Chirlin cited other problems with the election too, but leaned heavily on Krosnick’s testimony when she decided to oust the sitting mayor, Eric Perrodin, and reseat Bradley, whom Perrodin beat by 281 votes.

The decision shocked many legal experts, who wondered how an election could turn on such a seemingly minor issue. But two decades of studying the primacy effect have convinced Krosnick that the point is not minor at all.

“Not every race is the same,” he said. “But there’s lots of evidence, and it overwhelmingly indicates that being first is the best place to be.”

Began Study 2 Decades Ago

Krosnick, a professor of psychology and political science, said he began studying the phenomenon in 1982, focusing on its role in how people answer survey questions.

“If you ask people if the most important problem facing the country is crime, drugs or the economy, a certain number of people are going to choose crime just because it’s listed first,” he said. “If you do a taste test with five different beers, people are especially likely to prefer the first one they taste.”

Pollsters try to thwart that tendency by varying the order of possible answers to their questions, said Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll, the organization that conducts polls for the Los Angeles Times.

“You try to rotate the list because people have a tendency to remember what’s at the top or the bottom and forget what’s in the middle,” she said. “If we ask about three candidates, we’ll try to list each name first a third of the time, each name second a third of the time and so on.”

Krosnick said the only other time he has testified about the primacy effect was in the 1990 race for Ohio attorney general. In that case, he testified that the primacy effect did not play a large enough role to affect the election, and the Ohio Supreme Court agreed.

At the time, Krosnick “hadn’t done any work on its role in elections,” he said. “But my conclusions were sustained by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

Since then, his research has expanded to include the role of the primacy effect in elections. He said it is almost always present, though not always to the same degree, depending on voters’ familiarity with candidates, level of education and other factors.

‘Good Fortune’ Led to Testimony

Bradley’s attorney, Bradley Hertz, said Velma Williams, a law student at USC who helped on the case, found an article about the primacy effect in a 1972 law journal and contacted the author, who pointed her to Krosnick.

“It was just good fortune,” Hertz said, adding that Krosnick was on the West Coast at the time and was able to prepare his testimony on two days’ notice.

Bruce Gridley, the attorney who represented Perrodin, said he was surprised at how much the court relied on Krosnick’s testimony. Gridley called his own expert, a professor from Caltech, but Chirlin said she gave more weight to Krosnick’s words.

“We were ready for him, but we didn’t think the judge was going to find his argument very persuasive,” Gridley said.

California is one of only five states that require randomization of candidate names on the ballot.

“California is ahead of the curve in that regard,” Krosnick said. “It ought to be required in every state in the country to make it fair.”