1. Grab a friend and ask them to partake in a quick listening experiment. You'll be the tapper and they will be the listener.
2. Next, think of a common song, something that many people know like the "Star Spangled Banner" or "It's a Small World" for example. Don't reveal what song you are thinking of.
3. Tap out the rhythm on a table or wall. Don't hum. Don't even gesture or make facial expressions that go along with the song. Just tap a few stanzas.
4. Let your friend guess the song. Don't be surprised if they get it wrong.
5. Finally, tell them what song it was. Thank them for playing along. For fun, reverse roles and have them tap out a different, well-known song for you.
The debrief: When you were the tapper, did it seem obvious to you what song you were tapping? Was it frustrating to you that they couldn't identify it? If so, then, congratulations! You just experienced the curse of knowledge.
The curse of knowledge is an error in thinking called a cognitive bias. It happens when we know something so well that we assume others know it too.
The more familiar we are with something, the harder it is to believe that others aren't familiar with it.
This phenomenon was demonstrated in 1990, when Stanford graduate student, Elizabeth Newton, ran the tapper/listener experiment you just tried. Out of 120 songs, listeners were only able to correctly identify three, even though the tappers were fairly confident that the songs would be obvious to the listeners. If you just conducted your own little tapping experiment, this will make perfect sense to you!
More than a fun party trick, this concept has wide-spread application in the world of communication. Innocently enough, because of the curse of knowledge, people—just like the tappers—have a tendency to assume a shared base of knowledge with their audience. This inadvertently leads to exclusion, frustration and misunderstanding when communicating.
My ex-husband displayed the curse of knowledge in many of our conversations. He sells software solutions for Dell. Sometimes, when he excitedly told me about his wins for the day, he talked about cloud computing, CR and DR* plans, blah blah blah... Honestly, he'd often lose me at "cloud." In a conversation like this, I usually asked many clarifying questions, or if I got exasperated, I gave up. My mind just didn't understand it, so I tuned him out. (I can teach people to be great listeners, but that doesn't mean I am always a great listener!)
It's not that he intended to confuse me or that he felt big saying things I don't understand (to be determined); he just assumed we shared the same field of software knowledge and that the terms he used were common. Everyone knows this stuff, right? Wrong! Well, all of his peers do. To me, these words and phrases were foreign.
The curse of knowledge can creep up in all types of communication such as presentations, marketing pitches, instruction, conversations and email. It's possible any time someone with a specialized skill communicates to someone who doesn't share that same level of expertise. Once we know something, it's hard to think that others don't know it too.
Here are some examples of the curse of knowledge and its impact on others:
- A new student feels lost and leaves the beginner's yoga class early because the instructor uses words like asana, mudra and chaturanga, without explaining what they mean.
- An email from top management announces the implementation of a new software system but fails to communicate that it will ultimately make the employees' task much easier. The management assumes the benefits are obvious, but the employees don't know that. They, in turn, resist because it just seems like a lot of extra work for nothing.
- A flier that promises to stop marketing and start humaning by creating thumb-stopping, snackable content ends up in the recycle bin because you have no idea what it's referencing.(Neither do I.)
Our goal with any communication, at work, at home or in the studio, should be to get the message to our audience as effectively as possible. This requires getting out of our heads and into theirs, so to speak. The trick is to make messages clear and inclusive, without risking "dumbing it down" to the level of insulting the audience's intelligence. Here are a few strategies that will help you do just that:
1. Shrink your blindspots. They say you don't know what you don't know. But now you know! Knowing that cognitive biases such as the curse of knowledge exist might help you avoid them.
2. Though easier said than done, think back to when you were a novice. What explanations helped you get your head around the concepts you are trying to share?
3. Determine your audience's base level of subject knowledge. Is your audience comprised of experts, lay-people, somewhere in between, or a combination? Meet them where they are at, and take them further. With a mixed audience, respectfully acknowledge the experts ("I know so and so could teach this") while simplifying for the novices.
4. Test-drive your pitch or presentation to someone who is representative of your audience. Get someone to read your robust email before you send it. Ask for feedback about what made sense to them and what didn't. Have them summarize what they think you said and then check for accuracy. Adapt your messaging as needed.
5. Keep it simple. Use fewer words, state your main points up front, and limit jargon and 25-cent words. Your goal really isn't to show others how smart you are.
It bears repeating: Your goal is to get the message across as effectively as possible. Avoiding the curse of knowledge helps make this happen.
Curse broken!
*Cyber Recovery and Disaster Recovery
Photo by Olya Kobruseva from Pexels