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Recency bias is a cognitive bias that favors recent events over historic ones. A type of memory bias, recency bias gives "greater importance to the most recent event", such as the final lawyer's closing argument a jury hears before being dismissed to deliberate.
Recency bias should not be confused with anchoring or confirmation bias. Recency bias is related to the serial-position effect known as the recency effect. It is not to be confused with recency illusion, the belief or impression that a word or language usage is of recent origin when in reality it is long-established.
In psychology, primacy bias (excessive focus on earliest events or facts) and recency bias (excessive focus on the most recent events or facts) are often considered together as primacy and recency bias.
Recency bias can skew investors into not accurately evaluating economic cycles, causing them to continue to remain invested in a growing market even when they should grow cautious of its potential continuation, and refrain from buying assets in a declining market or recession period because they remain pessimistic about its prospects of recovery. "Tomorrow’s Market Probably Won’t Look Anything Like Today", Carl Richards, New York Times, February 13, 2012
When it comes to investing, recency bias often manifests in terms of direction or momentum. It convinces us that a rising market or individual stock will continue to appreciate, or that a declining market or stock is likely to keep falling. This bias often leads us to make emotionally charged choices—decisions that could erode our earning potential by tempting us to hold a stock for too long or pull out too soon. "Is Recency Bias Influencing Your Investing Decisions?", Portfolio Management, August 18, 2016, Charles Schwab
Lists of superlatives such as "Top 10 Superbowls", Greatest of All Time (G.O.A.T.), and sports awards (such as MVP trophies, Rookie of the Year, etc.) all are prone to distortion due to recency bias. "NBA MVP Voting: How Playing on the West Coast and Late-season Surges Affect the Race", Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, May 1, 2015 Sports betting is also impacted by recency bias. "The Five Biggest Cognitive Biases that Impair Most Sports Bettors", Jeff Ma, November 12, 2014, ESPN
Since at least 2008, reporters have frequently used the term "the pimp spot" to refer to the last slot in competitions such as American Idol, X-Factor, So You Think You Can Dance, American Song Contest, The Voice, and Dancing with the Stars and sometimes in conjunction with benefits of starting last. There is empirical evidence in academic literature suggesting that participants who performed later in major song contests, including Eurovision and New Wave (when the order of performances was randomized), were ranked higher.
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