People usually say "knowledge is power." But sometimes knowledge can turn into a burden, even a curse, for the person who carries it. Whether knowledge turns into a curse depends on how a person deals with this knowledge. Because there is always a fine line between knowing a truth and being able to explain it correctly to someone else.
AzEdu.az reports, citing foreign media, that the "curse of knowledge" or "expert's curse" is a cognitive bias that arises when people with deep knowledge in a certain field assume that others also know at the same level. This particularly leads to an underestimation of how much time and difficulty new learners experience.
For example, an experienced engineer might wonder why an intern doesn't understand a simple technical concept. Similarly, a mathematician would be surprised if someone else couldn't solve an seemingly easy equation. This is because over time, this knowledge becomes so natural and automatic for them that they begin to forget the difficulty of the learning process.
People usually speak at the language level they use most often. For example, researchers communicate more with other researchers. This is also the purpose of academic conferences. But the same speaking style can create problems in a different audience.
This is particularly evident in the field of education. To avoid falling into the curse of knowledge, a teacher must put themselves in the student's shoes. Because the knowledge level of a first-grade student is not the same as that of a fourth-grade student. The language the teacher uses, the examples they give, and their explanation style must change accordingly.
Moreover, as the teacher gains experience, the mental distance between them and the students grows even larger. This is because the teacher specializes further, while the student remains at the beginner level. This strengthens the curse of knowledge.
In 1975, American psychologist Baruch Fischhoff began to investigate a phenomenon called "hindsight bias." This is the tendency for people to consider an event's outcome predictable from the outset after they know it. These studies later laid the foundation for the concept of the "curse of knowledge."
The term "curse of knowledge" was first used in 1989 by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber. They investigated the tendency of people to assume that others know what they know, in the context of economic decisions.
In 1990, Elizabeth Newton, a psychology graduate student at Stanford University, conducted a famous experiment. She divided participants into two groups: "tappers" and "listeners." Tappers had to express songs by simply tapping out the rhythm with their fingers. Listeners had to guess which song it was.
Before the experiment, tappers thought that listeners would succeed about 50% of the time. But the actual result was only 2.5%.
The reason for this is clear: the tappers heard the song in their own minds, so the rhythm seemed very clear to them. But the listeners only heard random tapping sounds. Tappers had difficulty imagining that others did not have this information. This is a clear example of the curse of knowledge.
The curse of knowledge is often seen, especially in the fields of marketing and communication. An entrepreneur, when presenting their product, might explain it in a very technical and complex way. But if the audience does not have this information, the message is not effective.
The purpose of science and education is to share information and make it understandable. However, when experts assume that others will easily understand what they know, this advantage turns into a communication barrier.
The way to reduce this effect is simple: explain the information in a way that is appropriate for the other party's level. When simple words, clear examples, and understandable language are used, communication is strengthened and the curse of knowledge weakens.
