The curse of knowledgeKnowing stuff makes it hard to imagine what it’s like not to know stuff

Participants in this experiment were assigned to the role of either ‘tapper’ or ‘listener’

Tappers were presented with a list of 25 well known songs and asked to pick a song and tap out its rhythm to a listener

‘Tapper’

I’ll go for ‘Happy Birthday to You’

Which song would you like?

The listener’s role was to guess the title of the song being tapped

‘Listener’Um…

Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, tappers were asked to predict the chances of the listener guessing correctly

I think there’s a 50% chance he’ll get it right

It’s pretty obvious

isn’t it?!

‘Bohemian Rhapsody?!’

The listener’s role is difficult – they guessed the correct song only 2.5% of the time

But the tappers predicted the listeners would get it right 50% of the time

The tappers couldn’t believe how hard the listeners found it to pick up the tune – they could easily hear it in their own heads

It is impossible for tappers to ‘un-know’ the song and therefore very hard for them to imagine what it’s like to be a listener that can only hear the taps

Conclusions

1. Tappers were suffering from the Curse of Knowledge – once we know something it is hard for us to imagine what it is like not to know it

2. In this state we find it difficult to share our knowledge as it’s hard to re-create our listeners state of mind for ourselves

Reference

Overconfidence in the Communication of Intent: Heard and Unheard Melodies Ph.D. Diss., Stanford University, 1990 Elizabeth Newton