Recency bias
Recency bias is the tendency to give the most recent events disproportionate weight in judgements and predictions — assuming what just happened will keep happening, while older but relevant information quietly fades from view.
✦ Widely referenced — cross-referenced 14× across this reference (8 related ideas · 2 comparisons · 4 hubs) · The State of Thinking 2026 →
Why it happens
Recent events are easier to recall (an availability effect) and feel more relevant, so the mind extrapolates short-term trends and underweights the longer history that should inform the estimate.
It's extrapolation disguised as observation — every bubble looks obvious only after it bursts.
Examples
- Expecting a rising market to keep rising because it rose lately.
- Judging an employee by their last week rather than the whole year.
- Predicting form or weather from the single latest result.
How to counter it
- Zoom out to the full historical record, not just the latest stretch.
- Weight base rates over recent streaks.
- Ask whether a “trend” is real signal or merely recent noise.
The deeper point
Recency bias is extrapolation disguised as observation. The recent trend feels like data, but you’re assuming the last stretch is the whole story — which is why every bubble looks obvious only after it bursts.
Frequently asked
- What is recency bias?
- Overweighting what happened most recently — treating the latest result, mood, or trend as more representative than the longer track record actually warrants.
- How does recency bias affect investing?
- It makes people chase whatever rose lately and flee whatever fell, extrapolating short streaks into the future and ignoring long-run base rates.
- How do you counter recency bias?
- Deliberately consult the full history, anchor on base rates rather than recent streaks, and ask whether a pattern is genuine signal or just noise.
Related
Keep reading
The spotlight effect
Nobody noticed the stain — everyone was too busy under their own spotlight.
See this alongside the other thinking tools of investing.
This bias distorts investing, meetings and performance reviews.
The books behind better thinking
Listen to any of these free. Start a free Audible trial and get your first audiobook on the house.
Prefer to read? The canonical picks:
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
- The Art of Thinking Clearly — Rolf Dobelli
- The Great Mental Models, Volume 1 — Shane Parrish
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack — Charlie Munger
- Super Thinking — Gabriel Weinberg & Lauren McCann
- Seeking Wisdom — Peter Bevelin
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Cite this page
ReadGlobe. (2026). Recency bias. https://readglobe.com/bias/recency-bias/
"Recency bias." ReadGlobe, 29 May 2026, readglobe.com/bias/recency-bias/.
Primary source: Wikipedia
Editorial synthesis © ReadGlobe 2026, drawing on Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Tversky–Kahneman research program, and the primary cognitive-science literature. · Last reviewed 2026-05-29.