A study of 400,000 Wikipedia debates found that a first "keep" vote raises the chance of a final keep outcome by over 40 percentage points. Early opinions pull later ones in their direction, so meeting facilitators should deliberately choose who speaks first instead of letting the boss or loudest person set the tone.
The first person who speaks in your meeting may be warping everybody else's opinion. It's called the herding effect. Researchers analyzed more than 400,000 Wikipedia debates about whether articles should be kept or deleted. When the very first vote was keep, the likelihood of a final keep decision jumped by more than 40 percentage points. When the first votes were delete, the likelihood of deletion jumped by around 20 points. With the herding effect, early opinions pull later opinions in their direction. So in your next meeting, stop automatically asking the boss or the loudest person to go first. Deliberately start with somebody whose perspective usually gets overlooked, or maybe start with the person who's most expert in the issue you're discussing, because the first opinion in the room will determine the whole rest of the conversation.
