Turns out, this objectively nonsensical style of panic sprouts from a deep-rooted cognitive bias called the recency illusion—the tendency to assume that something is objectively new, and thus threatening, simply because it’s new to you.I Anyone who’s ever responded to an abstract, nonurgent “peril” as if it were about to push them off a cliff can thank this ever-present fallacy, which dupes us into believing that a thing only just happened because you only just happened to notice it—even if it’s actually been there for hours, months, or thousands of years.
