Sunday, December 9, 2018

Recency effect


,When someone does something wrong, don’t forget all the things they did right.”
 Anonymous
 How many  times it  has happened  You favour someone 99 times and couldn’t help one time , s/he will always remember that one time when you didn’t help , that one time was most crucial for them and by not helping them they feel betrayed why? Because when it comes to good deeds, humans always start new page everyday , so all your good deeds gone to the drain with passing of each day. Each day is new start, new beginning and it doesn’t matter anymore how much you helped them in the past
Other  way  round It  happens  with  us and how  many  times  we  have  judged our  friends  or  loved  ones branded  them  as  bad person conveniently  forgetting    all the  goods   they  have  done  to  us  earlier ?
Does one  one last  bad  experience  can  be a yard  stick  to  size them  and  brand  them  as  bad ?  why  it  happens ?
This  is  being  explained  as Recency  effect
 recency effect can be defined as a psychological phenomenon, wherein we tend to give greater importance to events or developments that have occurred recently than those that have taken place in the distant past and act on the basis of the former. In other words, we ignore a long-term trend in favour of the most recent one,... 
This bias is a part of the serial position effect, a term coined by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. According to this effect, the position of a particular item in a given list determines the likelihood of it being recalled. We tend to remember either the first items in the list (primacy effect) or the most recent ones (recency effect). Then  how  does  ir relate  to  human  behaviour ?
I don’t  want  to  dwell on  this  subject  and  go  deep  into this  as  I  am  not  a  qualified psychology  student  but would  like  to share  my  observation that  usually  occur  in  our  lives ,
Let me  narrate  a  experiment  that  was conducted  on  group  of people , say  10 people  in  different  age group
Well  they  were  all treated  with  best tasty   food from  top  restaurant  . After  the meal  they  were  all treated with ice  cream ,,,yes here  is  the  twist  .Ice  cream was  sprinkled  with  salt .  and  were  forced  upon   the  guests  to eat . After  this they  were  all asked  to  rate  the  food  on  0  to  10  scale . You  know  what  happened ? Every  one rated  below  3  for  the  food  forgetting  the  earlier  taste  of  best  food  served but  remembered   salty  icecream  which  was served  at  the end  .  !! This  is  Recency  effect  where  we tend to give greater importance to events or developments that have occurred recently [  bad  ice  cream ]  than those that have taken place earlier [  best  food]  and act on the basis of the former. In other words, we  we  conviently  forget  the good  food  but  judge  only  with  the  last process  that  had  occurred  that  is  bad  ice  cream .
How to avoid the recency effect? 

A simple way of overcoming the recency effect is to keep a record in order and  remember  all  the  good  things  they  have  done  earlier    and to keep the big picture in mind. . Think  about the good things that  has occurred  earlier with  the  person   and  judge a person  holistically  rather then one isolated  last incident . we  need to  take a decision based on complete  facts rather than being influenced by recent developments.