[Old Post from 2009] Are You Cursed With Knowledge?

From the archives: This post was written many years ago and somehow remained in my drafts. I've published it now with only minimal edits, so it reflects the thoughts and context of that time. Some ideas, I suppose, are worth revisiting.

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Sheila meets her college friend after a long time. During the conversation, she casually asks for her friend’s Twitter handle and, in response, gets a blank look. ‘What is a Twitter handle supposed to be?’ Sheila is flummoxed and surprised that her friend doesn’t follow her. She is unable to come up with the right words to explain the concept of microblogging to her friend. There seems to be a sudden disconnect. Her friend mistakes the silence for a condescending attitude on Sheila’s behalf.

Imagine explaining the internet to your grandmother or a photocopier to a five-year-old. For that matter, few people find it difficult to give out clear directions despite knowing a route very well. It bewilders them that someone could ask for something so elementary. This is the curse of knowledge. A concept arrived at from lots of research in economics and psychology, which shows that when we know something, it becomes very difficult to imagine not knowing it. Hence, our communication of this knowledge suffers. In extreme cases, the curse of knowledge could trigger communication failure and even strain relationships. There are several references, books, and opinions by various people on this subject.

Today, the world of business, which relies mainly on communication, is not far from being affected by the curse of knowledge. This might be a barrier to successful negotiations, because it leads us to falsely believe that our “subtle” signals are being received correctly by the other.

Try tapping out a popular song such as “Happy Birthday to You” or, better still, a widely popular Bollywood number and ask your friend across the table to guess it. In all probability, she wouldn’t even come close to guessing the song. This might seem bewildering, but when you tapped, the tune was all the while playing in your head. On the other hand, all that your friend heard was the staccato of taps. This is a classic example of the curse of knowledge, inferred from a study conducted by Elizabeth Newton in the 1990s at Stanford.

This can be extrapolated to the fact that most marketing campaigns, be it direct mailers, flyers, brochures or mail-orders, evince little or no response from the target audience. In most cases, it's not the delivery vehicle but the quality and clarity of the message it carries.

As the authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Chip & Dan Heath say, the greatest cruelty of knowledge lies in the fact that the better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse.

As most curses go, there is a cure for the curse of knowledge too. The trick lies in maintaining a fresh perspective like the one who is seeing for the first time. :)