Background
It is the first day of your introduction to biology class and the teacher is speaking about microbes and their role in human everyday life. Although this is an introductory course, the teacher is using words that you have not been introduced to before, so you do not fully understand the material being covered. However, she seems confident that you and your classmates have the knowledge necessary to comprehend what she is lecturing about.
Here’s Why
When teachers have not been students themselves for some time, they often might have difficulty placing themselves in their students’ shoes. For this reason, they may assume a student knows more than what they actually know and consequently teach at a level that may be too advanced for novices. The teacher will not recognize this mismatch due to the personal familiarity she/he has with the material.
Curse of Knowledge
Curse of knowledge occurs when an individual unknowingly assumes that the other individuals she/he is communicating with possess the background knowledge to understand what is being discussed.
The Experiment
Economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber coined the term “curse of knowledge” in a 1989 article in the Journal of Political Economy. In 1990, the term was popularized by an experiment designed by Stanford graduate student Elizabeth Newton. In this study, a group of subjects were asked to "tap" out well-known songs with their fingers, while another group tried to name the melodies. When the "tappers" were asked to predict how many of the "tapped" songs would be recognized by listeners, they persistently overestimated. The curse of knowledge is demonstrated here, as the "tappers" are so familiar with what they were tapping that they assumed listeners would easily recognize the tune.
Why Care?
The curse of knowledge is a concept that is important to keep in mind when attempting to educate others in any given topic. In order to communicate your message effectively, it is vital to remember that there are facts that you know that others might not know, and vice versa. If you want to truly persuade or affect someone, they need to be able to understand your message. Thus, allowing them the opportunity to tell you what they know is key. Once you have an idea of how much they know, you can begin making your claim. However, it is important to consistently check in with them and ask if they need anything to be further clarified.
