John and his colleagues predicted a recency effect, essentially a "What's she done lately?" phenomenon, whereby subjects would think that the person who had done well at the end had demonstration the most definitive mastery of the test. The result, however, showed a strong primacy effect. Subjects thought the woman was much smarter when she had done well at the beginning. The explanation seemed to be that subjects jumped quickly to a conclusion about the confederate's intelligence on the basis of the first few trait. Then they explained away later discrepant performance in terms of external or unstable factors. For example , subjects who saw the woman do well at the beginning believed that her early performance proved she was brilliant and that she must have gotten bored or careless at the end. Those who saw her do well at the end concluded that the later problem were a bit easier for her and that she was trying extra hard.