THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 2

How can tapping out the tune to “Happy Birthday” with your pencil help you communicate your ideas more clearly to an audience?

Subject:  The Curse of Knowledge - Tappers and Listeners

Event: The book Made to Stick published, 2007

The better you know something, the less you remember about how hard it was to learn. The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose. -Steven Pinker

Whenever you write, there’s a temptation to do more telling than showing.  This is because of a major writing and thinking obstacle called the curse of knowledge -- the principle that says that once we know something, it is hard to remember what it was like when we didn’t know it.  On this day in 2007, authors Chip and Dan Heath published the book Made To Stick:  Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive, which first explained the concept of the curse of knowledge for a wide audience.

                                                                        Image by izoca from Pixabay 

 

The reality of the curse of knowledge was first demonstrated in a 1990 study by Elizabeth Newton, a Stanford University graduate student in psychology.  Newton created a game where the players were given one of two roles:  “tappers” or “listeners.”  The tappers were given a well-known song, such as “Happy Birthday,” and were instructed to tap out the rhythm of the song on a table.  The listeners were then asked to guess the song.

 

When asked to predict how successful the listeners would be in identifying their songs, the tappers predicted 50%.  This prediction wasn’t close.  Of the 120 songs tapped out, the listeners guessed only three, a 2.5% success rate.  The curse of knowledge explains the large disparity between the tappers’ predictions and their actual success rate.  As they tapped out their tunes, they could not avoid hearing the song in their heads; the listeners, however, only heard the taps.  The tappers were “cursed” by their knowledge of the songs’ melodies and were unable to imagine what it was like for the listener to hear only the tapping (1).

To avoid the curse of knowledge, writers must do more than just TELL their point; instead, they must also SHOW it with specific, concrete, and varied evidence.  Furthermore, writers must try to see their writing from the perspective of the “listeners,” -- their audience -- continually asking themselves what they are trying to say, whether or not they are saying it clearly, and whether or not it can be understood by someone who has never encountered the topic before.

As George Orwell wrote in his classic essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), effective writers are always thinking about their audience and are always interrogating themselves to make sure that they are being clear:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? (2)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How did the results of the tappers and listeners study illustrate the problem that the curse of knowledge presents us when we try to communicate?

Challenge - PSA - How to Lift the Curse:  Write a public service announcement for speakers and writers on why understanding the curse of knowledge is essential for effective, clear communication with an audience.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:  

January 2, 1920:  The prolific writer, biochemist, and legend of science fiction, Isaac Asimov was born this day.  As the author of over 500 books, Asimov knew how to overcome the curse of knowledge.  He once said, “In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”

Sources:  

1-Heath, Chip and Dan Heath.  Made To Stick:  Why Some Ideas Die and Others Survive.  New York:  Random House, 2007.

2-Orwell, George.  “Politics and the English Language” (1946).