How to Lift the Curse of Knowledge

“The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose.” – Steven Pinker, author of The Sense of Style 

We all experience the curse of knowledge. Regardless of our field or expertise, we all succumb to its vicious cycle.

What is the curse of knowledge?

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when we unknowingly assume that other people know what we know. In other words, we have become so used to having knowledge about a certain topic that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to not have that knowledge. 

The Curse in Action

The Tapping Study

In 1990, a graduate student at Stanford University named Elizabeth Newton illustrated the curse of knowledge. In her study, Elizabeth divided participants into two groups: tappers and listeners. Each tapper was asked to pick a well-known song and tap out the rhythm on a table. Listeners were asked to name the song.

The tappers were also asked to estimate the probability that listeners would guess the names of the songs correctly. Their estimates ranged from 10% to 95%, with an overall average of 50%. Surprisingly, the listeners guessed correctly only 2.5% of the time. That’s well below the lowest estimate made by the tappers.

In this example, the tapper is cursed with the knowledge of knowing the tune. Because the tapper knows the song, they hear the tune as they tap the rhythm. Meanwhile, the listener hears some sort of rhythm, but they cannot discern the song.

Cranium

You might be familiar with this scenario if you play the game Cranium. In one activity of the game, you need to hum a tune and your team must guess the tune correctly.

As you hum the tune, you may quickly realize that your team struggles to guess the tune correctly. You might think “This is an easy one! Why don’t they know the name of this song?” This scenario is the curse of knowledge in action. You are cursed with the knowledge of knowing the tune, but your team does not have that same knowledge. 

Raise Your Awareness

Scientists and clinicians are not immune to the curse of knowledge. As you become an expert in something, you become more and more fascinated by the subtlety and complexity of a topic. This is when the curse of knowledge kicks in.

Unfortunately, you can’t unlearn what you already know. And when you’ve learned something really well, it becomes second nature. You become so comfortable using the language in your field that terms and concepts flow from your mind to your fingertips without conscious awareness.

How can you create this awareness? Many advise that you need to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. This approach may help a little. But the curse of knowledge ensures that we are more likely to overestimate our reader’s familiarity with our work. The curse feeds its own vicious cycle.

Another challenge is the fear of insulting our readers’ intelligence. We may think that we are “dumbing down” our writing by spelling something out.

The truth is that you would be wiser to assume too little than too much. Your readers often know a lot less about your subject than you think they do.

Break the Curse of Knowledge

Escaping the curse of knowledge can be challenging. Remember that the curse creates its own vicious cycle. But with a few key approaches, you can break the cycle.

Use plain language

One way to escape the curse of knowledge is to use a universal language that everyone speaks fluently: plain language. Avoid jargon, abbreviations, and technical terms. Only use terms that you know are familiar to your readers. Use shorter sentences and smaller words. Favor active voice and concrete language.

Get feedback

Show your writing to people who are similar to your intended readers. Ask them to critique your writing and share what they do not understand. By asking people to review your writing, you will learn what is obvious to you is not obvious to them. That’s why professional writers have editors. And that’s why many researchers need editors to review their writing.

Step away

Show your writing to yourself. Step away from your writing and allow enough time to pass that your text is no longer familiar. A day or two at the very least. As you read your draft, you will discover gaps in logic, sentences that are unclear, and other ways that your writing can improve.