Recency Effect

Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: it’s Tim’s first day at his new job and he’s eager to get started with the onboarding process and getting to know his new colleagues. After a brief welcome meeting, Tim’s line manager, Imran, invites him to go through some new software which Tim will be using in his new role. Step by step, Imran explains how the software works before asking Tim to go and work on a task independently to check that he’s comfortable with using it. Back at his desk, Tim starts to work on the task, only to find that he gets stuck halfway through because he can’t remember one of the steps. Frustratingly, he can remember the last two steps in the process really clearly. 

During his lunch break, Tim’s new desk partner, Samantha, introduces him to a group of colleagues. As she quickly rattles off everyone’s name, Tim tries desperately to commit this new information to memory. Despite his best efforts, Tim can only remember the names of the last three people Samantha pointed out to him. 

Tim’s ability to remember and recall information from his first day at work was influenced by the recency effect. When presented with information in a sequential manner—that is, one after another—our brains are hardwired to remember the information that was most recently presented to us. This can lead us to overlook or forget the information we encountered earlier in the sequence.