Fighting off the Recency Bias: Year-End Performance Reviews

 

Do you have an inclination to form judgments only on “current” observations?

Do more recent achievements, incidents, or even frustrations form the basis of your overall opinions, despite more impactful or significant events happening in the past that are forgotten or neglected? 

This is what psychologists call the “Recency Bias” - it’s the tendency to over-emphasize the importance of recent experiences or the latest information we possess when estimating future events.

In other words, when it comes to forming an opinion towards something, our human tendency is to take the most recent events to shape our overall judgment. 

Just because it’s fresh of the oven and occupies a large space in our current state of mind, we have a tendency to think that this is a good representation of the “big picture” - whilst forgetting that we are fundamentally flawed creatures who forget a lot, and therefore most likely have forgotten many other important events of the past. 

The danger: Subconsciously, we think that because we have “forgotten” about it, perhaps it’s not as important or significant.

This is particularly dangerous when it comes to this time of the year for working professionals: Year end performance reviews. 

What should we do? Here are five steps I personally adopt to counter the recency bias: 

1. Be Aware of it. We need to overcome our own personal biases, whilst at the same time, take more pre-emptive steps to produce a more wholesome and holistic year end report, recognizing that other people - leaders, managers and subordinates alike - have this tendency, too. 

2. Get a holistic picture & Retrace your history. Dig up archives, emails, documents. Do your research to make sure you get the facts right, without neglecting the great (and not-so-great) stuff that happened in Q1 and Q2. 

3. Don’t get blindsided by recent events - The running gag among managers is that October is “year end sale” - the time of the year where WhatsApp channels are exploding with messages of achievements. On one hand, we need to be objective about achievements and give credit where it’s due - on the other hand, we need to make sure we don’t allow ourselves to form a judgment from a limited perspective. 

4. Get into the practice of journalling - Making references to the book, “Building a Second Brain”: Every time there is something worthy of being highlighted, write it down. Use simple, cloud-based digital apps that can help us quickly store and retrieve info such as OneNote or Notion. Also, what I found was that focused recognition was incredibly helpful: If you’ve archived them well, just look that up! 

5. Seek feedback from others. As human beings, our judgment will always be limited. We need third party perspectives to help us see our blindsides. 

Hope that helps! 

Do you - or others around you - experience the Recency Bias? How do you overcome them?