Curse of knowledge (cognitive bias): what it is and how it affects us

Cognitive biases are a type of psychological effect that causes us to deviate from reason and make irrational or inaccurate judgments. There are many of them, but here we will focus on one of them: the curse of knowledge.

As we will see, this bias means that we often explain things by assuming that the recipients of the message have more information than they really do.

In this article we will explain how this bias has been studied and what other cognitive biases it is related to. We will also see what its consequences are (especially in the educational field) and how we can act to stop it and promote deeper learning and understanding in our listeners.

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Curse of knowledge (cognitive bias): what is it?

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that appears when a person who communicates with another/s, without realizing it presupposes that the other or others have the necessary background (at the level of information) to understand what is being explaining.

I mean, this person It presupposes that the people who are listening to it have more information than they have. really.

To better understand the effect of the curse of knowledge, let's take an example. Let's imagine a teacher who has to explain a subject to students who are beginners in that subject; that is to say, to students who really do not have knowledge of the subject, and said teacher has difficulties to do so, because he is not capable of putting himself in their place.

As a result, he explains things assuming that students already have prior knowledge of the subject.

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Consequences

What are the consequences of the curse of knowledge? For a start, that the people receiving the information do not understand what is being explained to them, but also that misunderstandings occur, that we feel "stupid" as students, that we feel that we were not listening carefully enough, etc.

As for the person who falls into the curse of knowledge (for example, the teacher), this can come to assume that what he is explaining is easy to understand, clear and direct, even though he really isn't be.

Thus, both for the one who explains and for the one who receives or listens, an interference occurs, and all this can lead to poor instruction (in the educational sphere), but also to misunderstandings in the more social sphere (for example, in a conversation between friends).

Origin

How did the cognitive bias of the curse of knowledge arise? Curiously, It is a concept that does not come from psychology, but was coined by three economists: Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber.

These economists published their contributions in relation to this concept in the Journal of Political Economy. Specifically, the objective of his research was to prove that the agents who work in the field of analysis economic, and who had more information, could more accurately anticipate the judgment of less informed.

Research: hindsight bias

The research of these economists was based on another work, this time carried out by Baruch Fischhoff, an American researcher, in 1975.

Fischhoff what he had investigated was another cognitive bias, this time called "hindsight bias," according to which when we know the outcome of a certain event, we think we could have predicted it more easily than if we had not known about it result.

That is to say, it is something quite irrational, since according to the hindsight bias, we would tend to think that we could have predicted things just by knowing their outcome in advance.

Furthermore, all this occurs quite unconsciously, and according to Fischhoff's results, the participants in his research did not know that their knowledge about the final result could affect their answers (and if they did know, they could not ignore the effects of bias). hindsight).

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A question of empathy?

But how is the curse of knowledge related to this new cognitive bias? Basically, in this Fischhoff investigation, it was observed how participants could not correctly reconstruct their previous and less informed states. This is directly related to the curse of knowledge, but how?

To understand it in simpler words, what Fischhoff said was that when we have knowledge about some subject or about some result, it is difficult to imagine how another person who really does not have such information thinks, since our mental state is "anchored" in the initial (retrospective) state that knows the results.

So, in a way, the effect of the curse of knowledge also has to do with a lack of empathy, at least at a cognitive level, since we are incapable of putting ourselves in the place of the “unfamiliar” person, because we have settled in our state, which is that of a "knowing" person (who has the information).

Applications

How is this cognitive phenomenon “applied” in daily life? We have seen how the cognitive bias of the curse of knowledge appears in areas such as education, but also in others: in our more social sphere, for example, when we interact in our day to day with other people.

Thus, when we talk to other people, we often assume that they will understand what we explain to them because they have a prior base of information that they do not really have. This can cause interference in communication, and even generate misunderstandings.

In the field of education, as we have already seen, it can also happen; so that, How to teach students without the phenomenon of the curse of knowledge interfering with their learning?

Basically, putting ourselves in their place, and starting from their initial state of information on the subject. This may sound simple but it is not. It requires practice and an important “cognitive empathy” exercise.

For this we can try to go back to the origin, that is, to the moment in which we, as teachers, did not have this information either. From this, the objective will be to explain from the base, without consciously assuming that the student knows more than he really knows.

How to stop the curse of knowledge?

We have seen some ways to avoid the curse of knowledge, but since it seems like a interesting and very practical issue in the educational field, above all, we are going to delve into this spot.

Professor Christopher Reddy proposes several guidelines to avoid falling into this bias and promote more effective learning in the students. We are going to know these guidelines in a very summarized way. How do we teach so that learning is deeper and lasting?

• Creating a previous pleasant emotion in the student.
• Through multisensory classes.
• Teaching spaced out in time, so that the brain can process what has been acquired.
• Explaining through narration.
• Using analogies and examples.
• Using novelty and surprise.
• Providing the student with previous knowledge on the subject.

Bibliographic references:

• Fischoff, B. (2003). Hindsight ≠ foresight: the effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. BMJ Quality & Safety, 12(4): 304-311.
• Froyd, J. & Layne, J. (2008). Faculty development strategies for overcoming the "curse of knowledge". 2008 38th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference.
• Kennedy, J. (1995). Debiasing the Curse of Knowledge in Audit Judgment. The Accounting Review, 70(2):pp. 249 - 273.
• Munoz, A. (2011). The influence of cognitive biases in jurisdictional decisions: the human factor. An approximation. InDret. Journal for the analysis of law.