The curse of knowledge.

Can you forget acquired knowledge and why is that a problem?

In business can you ever forget something you already know, so as to explain away gaps in comprehension to someone who doesn’t understand what you are trying to get across? That sounds more complicated than it is.

I often see presenters and speakers make the same mistakes in thinking their audience knows the background knowledge to their presentation and then think they fully comprehend the objectives they are aiming to achieve. If they already know what you are talking about, why are they there? You can’t unlearn what you have learnt and this can sometimes cause a huge comprehension gap in your audience or business dealings when you incorrectly assume knowledge on their behalf.

A well known study at Stanford tested this theory out in an experiment with students called Tappers and Listeners. The experiment split a group of students into two groups, Tappers and Listeners, to try and analyse how the curse of knowledge could lead to assumptions and conclusions not expected. The Tappers were given 120 very well known tunes, such as Happy Birthday and then asked to tap them out for the Listeners to identify. Sounds easy enough. Tap, tap, tap.

The Tappers were then asked how many songs they thought the Listeners would identify and were confident it would be at least 50%. Once again it sounds easy enough. Tap, tap, tap.

The Listeners guessed 2.5% of the 120 songs tapped out by the Tappers.

Seems the Tappers knew the songs by heart and assumed they were easily identifiable by the Listeners as they merrily tapped away. Without that knowledge the Listeners were never going to identify the songs and the curse of knowledge became the comprehension hurdle they could not jump.

A difficult problem to avoid.

So the next time you stand in front of a crowd or discuss things in a business meeting, consider your audience and quickly work out if the curse of knowledge will be your downfall. A quick explanation of the background and objectives could save you a lot of stress and disappointment and get your message heard and understood.

Tap, tap, tap.

No that’s not Happy Birthday, It’s Stairway to Heaven. How could you, not know that?