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“The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose.” Steven Pinker1
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“The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose.” Steven Pinker1
It is notoriously difficult to imagine what it is like not to know what you know; or what other people are likely to see from their vantage point.
A classic demonstration is Jean Piaget’s experiment on egocentrism among young children.2 He showed children a model of a landscape, with a doll looking at it from a different angle. When asked to describe what the doll might be seeing, children tend to choose a picture that represents their own viewpoint, not the doll’s.
We may grow out this form of egocentrism, but as adults we still struggle to imagine other people’s metaphorical point of view.
Researchers looking at the writing process see the curse of knowledge as one of the main barriers to successful written communication.3 (Hayes 1989, Schriver 2012).
John Hayes and Diana Bajzek4 write
Effective writers and speakers must recognize the knowledge, attitudes, biases, and beliefs that they share with the audience, the ‘common ground,’ and just as important, they must recognize what is not shared…
… Unfortunately, people have a strong tendency to believe that other people are like themselves in knowledge, attitude, and behavior—a tendency that leads them to overestimate, and sometimes strongly overestimate, the ground they share with others. This tendency [is] called ‘the false consensus effect’. (page 104)
How can we overcome the curse of knowledge? By making an effort to understand our readers, and by helping them to understand us. And by testing if you can.
1. Steven Pinker (2014) The sense of style: the thinking person’s guide to writing in the 21st century, Penguin. The quote on this page is from Chapter 3.
2. Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child’s conception of space. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
3. Hayes, J. R. (1989). Writing research: The analysis of a very complex task. In D. Klahr & K. Kotovsky (Eds) Complex information processing: the impact of Herbert A Simon (pp 209-234). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
3. Schriver, K. (2012). What we know about expertise in professional communication. In V. W. Berninger (Ed.), Past, present, and future contributions of cognitive writing research to cognitive psychology (pp. 275-312). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
4. Hayes, J. R., & Bajzek, D. (2008). Understanding and reducing the knowledge effect. Written Communication, 25(1), 104–118.