Recency effect

PracticalScholarlypsychologyscience

Etymology

From "recent" (Latin "recens," fresh, new) plus "-cy," with "effect." It comes from mid-20th-century memory research on the "serial position" curve, which found both the first and last items in a list are recalled best.

  1. noun phrase · /REE-sun-see ih-FEKT/

    The tendency to best remember the most recent items in a series, and to give them outsized weight.

    What it names

    Explains why the last thing you heard sticks — the closing argument, the final interview, the latest headline.

    Example

    Thanks to the recency effect, the panel remembered the final candidate most vividly, fair or not.

    Related idea

    The primacy effect is its mirror — we also overweight what came first; together they leave the middle of any list most easily forgotten.

See also

Availability heuristicDuration neglectPeak–end rulePrimacy effectRecency bias