Recency Bias
- “why does the last candidate always win”
- “recency bias explained”
- “why do I forget the middle of the year”
- “judging by the most recent thing”
01 · Side by side
Side by side
Comparison sheet
| Aspect | Recency bias | Availability heuristic |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Narrow: about order and time | Broad: about ease of recall |
| Silent rule | 'What came last matters most' | 'If I can think of examples, it must be common' |
| Example | Judging a whole year on the last month | Overrating the risk of plane crashes |
| Named by | No single coiner | Tversky and Kahneman, 1973 |
02 · Which one you meant
Which one did you mean?
In shortReaders who land here meaning Recency Bias rather than Availability heuristic are usually searching for phrases like “why does the last candidate always win”, “recency bias explained”, “why do I forget the middle of the year”.
Availability Heuristic
- “why do rare disasters feel likely”
- “the news makes me scared of the wrong things”
- “availability heuristic examples”
- “judging risk by what I remember”
03 · Which came first
Which came first
In shortRecency bias. 1962 — Bennet Murdock maps the serial position curve in detail, finding a recency effect extending across roughly the last eight words of a list.
- 1962
Recency Bias. Bennet Murdock maps the serial position curve in detail, finding a recency effect extending across roughly the last eight words of a list.
- 1973
Availability Heuristic. Tversky and Kahneman publish a series of experiments. In one, participants heard a list of names and judged whether it held more men or women; each list held 19 famous names of one gender against 20 less-famous of the other — so the famous gender was in fact the rarer one, and participants still judged it more numerous.
04 · Read either one
Read either one in full
05 · Tell these apart too