Prioritisation: does a familiar request deserve more time?
Within a team, some requests arrive repeatedly through familiar contacts and channels. The management question is precise: is that familiarity a sufficient reason to give them priority in the schedule?
What the literature establishes
Robert B. Zajonc (1968, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) showed that repeated exposure to a stimulus could be enough to produce a more favourable evaluation, without additional positive information. This mere exposure effect concerns liking, not the objective value of what is presented. It offers a reason not to confuse “this is familiar” with “this deserves more resources”.
Familiarity does not operate uniformly
Robert F. Bornstein (1989, Psychological Bulletin) synthesised experimental research on the relationship between exposure and liking. His meta-analysis shows that the effect varies with factors including stimulus characteristics and exposure conditions. Repetition can therefore influence an evaluation, but there is no general rule that every repeated request will necessarily gain priority.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that recurring requests or those from regular contacts should be given less weight. That would replace one shortcut with another: an established relationship can provide reliable information about commitments, risks and the work required. The useful distinction is between familiarity alone and verifiable facts that shared experience actually makes available. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
These studies do not directly measure the order in which businesses handle requests or the time allocated to them. Applying their findings to prioritisation remains a hypothesis to examine, not a diagnosis of favouritism. Conversely, removing the requester's name does not automatically improve a decision: it may conceal a relevant contractual responsibility or operational dependency.
A practical check in Lugano
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources’ “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, teams in banking, fashion, trading and Italian-speaking family SMEs in Lugano could undertake an exercise using a sample of requests documented in Italian, with the expected outcome, justified deadline, risk and estimated effort. Two assessors independently rank the requests, one with requester identities and one without, while retaining relevant obligations in both versions. The measure is the proportion of requests whose rank differs between the two lists; each difference is then examined to determine whether useful information is missing or the justification rests solely on the established relationship. The exercise does not establish a causal effect of familiarity, but makes the reasons given for allocating time open to scrutiny. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Lugano
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