Over-weighting the most recent reporting or events at the expense of the longer record. What arrived this week is treated as the state of the world, and the baseline it should be compared against is forgotten.
In intelligence analysis
- A single fresh report displaces a settled judgement; the product becomes a summary of the last seven days rather than an assessment of the subject.
- Trend claims are made from two adjacent data points, with the longer series that would contradict them unexamined.
- It is the operational form of Availability Heuristic — recent is available, so recent is probable.
- In recurring delivery (daily briefs, threat feeds) it produces oscillation without new information: each cycle reports the newest item, and the assessment moves with the news cycle rather than with the evidence.
Countermeasure
- Always present the current period against the prior baseline, and say explicitly when the new reporting does not change the judgement.
- Maintain a standing picture (a running assessment) so that a new item must argue against it rather than replace it by default.
Related
- Cognitive Bias — the taxonomy this bias sits within
- Availability Heuristic — ease of recall as a proxy for likelihood
- Anchoring Bias — the opposite failure: refusing to adjust from the first position
- The Intelligence Cycle — the evaluation phase is where the longer record belongs