What is the Recency illusion bias?
The recency illusion bias causes people to believe that the things they are experiencing are more recent than they actually are.
Why is this important?
Because one of the many cognitive biases that exist, knowledge of how it works allows you to be aware of its existence and use so you can protect yourself from being fooled by it.
Recency Illusion Bias Examples include…
- People who have just started driving think other drivers on the road are bad drivers even though experience tells them otherwise
- The Cleveland infanticide case where a woman killed her children because she thought the house was possessed by demons caused by her boyfriends surprise party
- Politicians will claim their policies are successful because they are recent if there are long term benefits or benefits that are not immediately apparent
Why do people use the Recency illusion bias?
People often use this bias because of the availability heuristic, which is a cognitive shortcut where people make decisions about things based on what they can recall.
How do people use this bias?
If something happens recently, it seems more important or impactful than if it happened long ago. People tend to believe that because something has only just happened, it must be more influential than if it had occurred earlier. This also ties into our tendency to find patterns within small samples. So if something happens very recently then we are likely to assume that it occurs all the time, but when an event does not occur for a while we assume it will never happen again.
Why is this a dangerous bias?
This could be a dangerous bias because when put together with other biases, it can have disastrous effects. For example in the case of the Cleveland infanticide when the woman killed her children, she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and believed that demons were responsible for her boyfriends surprise party. So these incorrect perceptions caused by recency illusion ended up in this tragic event.
How can we use this bias?
The best way to use this bias is to make people aware of their own susceptibility to it so they are more cautious about their judgements. Also you need to be careful about how new something actually is, making sure you don’t underestimate older information or overestimate new information.
How to avoid this bias?
The best way to avoid this bias is by avoiding the availability heuristic. If you are not able to recall something, it does not mean that it does not exist. Also one should be wary of how current an event truly is before making conclusions about its effect on the present or future.
Which profession use this bias?
Politicians often rely on recency illusion bias because they know their policies will appear more successful if they are recent. Another example is actors who have just finished a movie – once it’s premiered it seems popular among the community even though only people close to the project knew about it beforehand. They convince other people that their work has been really influential when in reality these things usually happen gradually.
Conclusion.
Recency illusion bias is a cognitive bias that causes people to believe things are more recent than they actually are. This bias can be dangerous because it can make you overestimate the importance of new information or underestimate older information. The best way to avoid this systematic mistake is by being aware of how this affects your judgements, checking whether something really is newer than something else before making judgments about its importance and effect on the present.
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