Other people have perceptions, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from your own, and these things can influence people’s behavior.

The curse of knowledge

‘’The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that causes people to fail to properly understand the perspective of those who do not have as much information as them.’’ In short, the more you know about something, the harder it is to explain. Have you noticed how easily we can forget the information we know or assume what we know is commonly shared and processed by others? This is particularly problematic in fields like sharing knowledge, predicting people’s behavior or understanding your past self. Among the different causes that explain the curse of knowledge shared by Itamar Shatz, one of them caught my attention. This one is much more sneaky, but no less important. It is called the Theory of mind. It is described as ‘’the ability to understand that other people have perceptions, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from your own, and that these things can influence people’s behavior.’’ It is fascinating to me how many layers of complexity there are in the art of communicating. And the least we can do is to be aware of this complexity. It’s the first step to a less conceited and condescending communication.