The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias in which a better informed person finds it difficult to think about a problem from the perspective of a less informed person, unconsciously assuming that others share the background knowledge needed to understand them. The term was introduced by the economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber in a 1989 paper examining how it can produce inefficiencies in economic settings such as market transactions and communication between experts and non-experts. The bias is frequently cited in discussions of teaching and technical communication, since experts who have long since forgotten what it is like not to know a subject often struggle to explain it clearly to beginners.
Facts
Core ClaimThe bias makes it hard for an expert, such as a teacher or a specialist writer, to reconstruct what a novice does not yet know, since once a person understands something they struggle to model the mind of someone who does not. 1 First Described Year Everyday Context Replication Standing Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
In Branch
Source Wikipedia: Curse of knowledge
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Curse of knowledge
Wikimedia Foundationlead paragraph, definition
The curse of knowledge, also called the curse of expertise or expert's curse, is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge.
lead section, defining sentence
The curse of knowledge, also called the curse of expertise or expert's curse, is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge.
origin/history passage
The term "curse of knowledge" was coined in a 1989 Journal of Political Economy article by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber.
Lead
For example, in a classroom setting, teachers may struggle if they cannot put themselves in the position of the student.
Article text
However, a replication study conducted in 2014 found that this finding was not reliably reproducible across seven experiments with large sample sizes, and the true effect size of this phenomenon was less than half of that reported in the original findings.
Lead section
The curse of knowledge, also called the curse of expertise or expert's curse, is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person who has specialized knowledge assumes that others share in that knowledge.
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