I was just at a four-way stop intersection. It was my turn to proceed, and the car to my right was a Toyota. A couple of weeks ago, I would 
have paid that no mind, but today I found myself thinking, "Is that car going to accelerate uncontrollably forward-towards me? And if it does, will it be able to brake?"
Such is the power of last impressions, or recency effects, as we psychologists like to call them. Decades of positive impressions undone by a couple of weeks of very bad press, (which appears to be true although that's not technically relevant). The company's begrudging and dragged-out admissions is only making them look worse. It looks even worse when outside experts insinuate there's an electronics flaw in addition to the limited mechanical problem the company has owned up to.
Of course, primacy effects--what comes first-are powerful too. The Yugo, made its mark at the start as a piece of junk and rode off into the sunset-or salvage yard-the same way.
Jane Austen well understood the power of impressions at the beginning and at the end. Her masterwork, Pride and Prejudice, was initially titled First Impressions. Fitzwilliam Darcy impresses Elizabeth Bennet as prideful and vain, and it takes hundreds of pages to overcome this primacy effect. In the end, after she realizes her misimpression, the recency effect of his inherent human value ushers in, presumably, a lifetime of wedded bliss.
The reverse may have happened with Toyota.
The nature of serial effects was first studied by Hermann Ebbinghaus, the father of the learning curve, back in the 1880s. He presented lists of words to subjects for memorization, and found that those at the beginning--primacy--and end--recency--were more reliably remembered.
Many of the explanatory hypotheses for the primary effect boil down to the idea that first impressions occur when the mind is not distracted by competing information. We have a chance to rehearse and process the information in an uncrowded mind. Similarly, a last impression is lasting because no competing information follows.
First impressions also set up a bias. Once Elizabeth Bennett believed Darcy was prideful, this set up a prejudice that was hard to overcome. Instances of further pride were confirmatory, and instances of altruism went unnoticed or were discounted as suspect.
If you interviewing for a job--it's best if you are the first or last interviewee. If first, it's even better if you happen to be followed by a dud. If last, your impression is enhanced if you follow the dud.
In the case of Toyota, at first, people didn't want to believe that the arguably most reliable car in the world could have these kinds of problems, but weeks of negative impressions, not countered by any good news, left me wondering at the stop sign about whether that Toyota would start or stop uncontrollably.
Strongly entrenched positive attitudes can change fast if the latest news is only bad. And the recent bad news wiped out last year's news that Toyota had become the world's largest auto manufacturer. Who cares about that when your car is doing an impression of a bucking bronco, and I don't mean Mustang? This negative news makes even GM look good.
What's a multi-billion dollar company to do?
First, you don't dig a deeper hole by arguing against the possibility of a wider problem. The recency effect-denying the extent of the problem 
last week that you are admitting to this week-is fresh in the public's mind. Why should we believe you now, when we found out we shouldn't have believed you last week?
Last week it was only an acceleration problem. This week it's a brake problem. Can an electronic problem be far behind?
Maybe it's a stereotype, but our impression of the Japanese is that they place a big premium on personal responsibility and apology. They damage that impression when they behave like stonewalling Americans.
But it's an American example that gives them a ladder out of the hole they are now using a shovel to dig.
In 1982, over the course of three days, seven healthy people on the west side of Chicago mysteriously died. But it was soon found that they had all taken Tylenol capsules. In fact, two people making a condolence call on the one of the victims took Tylenol from the same bottle and 
died too. This helped identify the cause as product tainted with cyanide poisoning. Further investigation concluded that it did not happen at the factory, but that it was a case of tampering. The murderer (there are suspects but no probable cause for a charge) went into several stores opened up the Tylenol capsules and loaded them with cyanide leaving victims and panic in his wake. Hundreds of copycat incidents followed, both true and apocryphal.
Advertising guru Jerry Della Femina, the man who brought us the singing Meow Mix cat, pronounced Tylenol dead too: "I don't think they can ever sell another product under that name. There may be an advertising person who thinks he can solve this and if they find him, I want to hire him, because then I want him to turn our water cooler into a wine cooler."
At first he looked prescient as Tylenol tanked in less than a year from 35 percent of the market to 9 percent.
Eventually, his prediction proved wrong.
What did Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol, do?
First, the company told everyone to stop taking Tylenol and destroyed 31 million capsules at a cost of $100 million. In contrast to Toyota, which is denying the extent of the problem and smacking down Ray La Hood, Transportation Secretary, after he told people to stop driving the car, Tylenol not only told people to cease taking the drug but not to take the drug again until they could determine the extent of the tampering.
They worked closely with law enforcement, offered a reward, and, in general, did nothing to contradict the notion that they were not only taking responsibility but that they were working hard to solve the problem. They spent millions more with an offer to exchange any bottle of Tylenol capsules--none of which may have had cyanide--with tablets.
Seeing Johnson & Johnson executives weeping at the victims' funerals didn't hurt either.
After the initial panic and damage control, efforts began to resurrect the brand.
First, they introduced a "tamper proof' triple-seal package, which enabled them to claim their product-despite its deadly history-was now safer than any of its competitors. Defensively, all of Tylenol's competitors now use similarly tamper-resistant packaging.
Then followed a marketing and PR blitz. Money-off coupons were widely distributed, and there was deep discounting. Company representatives fanned out to the medical community to speak of the company's renewed and unprecedented efforts at safety.
The verdict of history is that an honest and open response to the kind of bad news that afflicted Tylenol--and is now afflicting Toyota--was a key to product revival.
In only a year Tylenol moved back to a 25 percent market share, and today it is remains the world leader among over the counter analgesics.
One difference between Tylenol and Toyota is that the drug's problems were the result of outside tampering not inside engineering blunders. It's easier to forgive someone when it's only indirectly their fault. But Johnson & Johnson took ownership of the problem. They didn't say, "We're the victim of tampering." They said, "Even if it's not the fault of the manufacturing process, we're going to deliver the product in tamper proof containers so it can never happen again.
As I write this, the last impression--the recency effect--of Toyota is their lack of township of the full extent of the problem. Heaven help them if and when their outside critics are proven correct. What will happen if we find there's a coverup?
I'll bet you have Tylenol in your medicine cabinet, but what would it take for you to ever buy a Toyota again?
How will Toyota prevent its headache from becoming chronic?
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