Curse of knowledge 🧧
🧠Psych - 80 / 100
Hey, there.
Today, we will be talking about the Curse of knowledge.
Yes, I am not joking. This is an actual cognitive bias!
What is it?
When an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.Â
Examples -
Since people’s communication depends on the knowledge that they share, it can be difficult for people who know different things to discuss the same topic, even when this discussion doesn’t involve direct teaching.
For example, it can be difficult for a scientist to discuss their work with laypeople, because the scientist might struggle to remember that other people aren’t familiar with the terminology in their field.Â
Where does it occur?
When you start a new job, it takes you a good amount of time to get in with the flow of common jargons, environment & get par on the level of the workplace.
This is likely a classic case of the curse of knowledge.
Why do I need to know?
The curse of knowledge occurs due to the imperfect way in which we process information. Specifically, since we spend the majority of the time seeing things from our own perspective, we struggle to remember that other people’s perspective and knowledge levels are different from ours, due to our failure to fully adjust from the anchor of our personal perspective.
Essentially, this means that when we know a certain piece of information, we struggle to imagine the perspective of those who do not know it.
Takeaways: -
A lot of people might not possess the knowledge which you assume is common.
Avoiding assumptions is a great way to start.
References & Studies: -
https://effectiviology.com/curse-of-knowledge/#Why_we_experience_the_curse_of_knowledge
https://www.usertesting.com/blog/curse-of-knowledge
Learn something new every month.Join the lesson club!
Looking for previous issues? Take a look at Archives.