Recency bias is the name for the heavy influence that recent experience can have on our decision making
It is the tendency to think that trends and patterns we observe in the recent past will continue in the future.
For instance - if a person is asked to recall the names of 30 people
that they have just met, they will usually remember the names of the
people that they most recently met first.
There is a tendency for some people to focus on "what's happened lately" when evaluating or judging something. It's the same in performance reviews. Some managers tend to weight what the employee appears to have done in the last weeks or months, rather than looking at the entire period evaluation is supposed to be based on.
There is some sense to doing this, however. One could argue that an employee who shows recent improvement is on the road to success, and therefore should not be penalized by things that happened, let's say 10 months ago. It's a decent argument.
However, if the desire is to improve productivity, rather than to reward or punish, it IS useful to discuss past problems to try to ensure they don't re-occur.
The recency bias can also work both ways. Remember that recent behavior can be positive or negative, so managers stuck with the recency bias may be evaluating overly positively or negative, depending on what's most recent.
Awareness of this bias is very helpful to avoid it at work.
Have a great HR Day:)
Shared by Maneesh MS, +Maneesh Muralidharanpillai , Appollo Tyres Limited
