Seductive details are interesting, but sometimes irrelevant to the target material present in texts and lectures. In the current study, 388 undergraduate students read six paragraphs describing Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages (i.e., target material). Participants in four groups also read one of two biographical paragraphs. The biographical paragraphs contained seductive details about Freud that were either related (i.e., context-dependent) or unrelated (i.e., context-independent) to the main ideas (i.e., target material) and presented before (primacy) or after (recency) the target-material paragraphs or not at all (control). After reading, students took a quiz. Quiz performance on items addressing target material was not influenced by the type of seductive details but rather its placement relative to the main text. Students in the recency conditions performed better than did students in the primacy and control conditions. Thus, both types of seductive details reduced learning when they were presented at the beginning of the text. (Contains 1 table.)