Mentally simulate ten tosses of a coin by writing down a sequence of Heads and Tails that might result from ten flips of a fair coin. (Try this now!) When a random sample of people were asked to do this, over 80% of them wrote down Heads as the first flip. Expanding on this result, when the instructions asked for a sequence of “Tails and Heads,” participants were more likely to put Tails as the first flip. Indeed, when they were told that an imaginary coin was purple on one side and orange on the other (with the two colors presented in random order), participants were more likely to start with whichever color was mentioned first. Researchers could influence the results just based on the order in which they listed the options.

(a) Is this an illustration of sampling bias or wording bias or both or neither? 

(b) If you are letting a friend choose between Option Q and Option W, and you are really hoping that they pick Option W, in what order should you present the options?