A ‘curse of knowledge’ in the absence of knowledge? People misattribute fluency when judging how common knowledge is among their peers

Birch, Susan; Brosseau-Liard, Patricia É.; Haddock, Taeh; Ghrear, Siba

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.04.015

Cited by 33 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This effect occurred when the researchers exposed participants to factual questions with and without the answers. These results further show that fluency affects hindsight bias (Birch, Brosseau-Liard, Haddock, & Ghrear, 2017).…”

supporting

confidence: 67%

“…Specifically, we found that prior experimental exposure to clear versions of words (number of priming presentations) increased identification success (repetition priming); however, number of priming presentations had no noticeable effect on hindsight bias. Previous work has shown that compared with new trivia, prior experimental exposure to trivia increased participants' thinking they knew the trivia all along (Wood, 1978) or estimates of peers' ability to know the trivia (Birch et al, 2017;see also Harley et al, 2004). We believe that the different data patterns reflect stimulus and procedural differences.…”

Section: Links To Hindsight Biasmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Birch et al and Wood used trivia questions, and Harley et al used celebrity faces. Other work involving trivia shows that the more available the correct answer is when trying to recall one's original, naïve answer or estimating what a naïve peer would answer, the more hindsight bias results (Groß & Bayen, 2015;Hell, Gigerenzer, Gauggel, Mall, & Muller, 1988). It is likely that Wood's (1978) and Birch et al's (2017) participants found it hard to ignore the correct answers to trivia that they had studied multiple times, resulting in anchoring on the correct answer and insufficiently adjusting from it when estimating from a naïve perspective (see Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004). Our participants faced a somewhat different problem: They encountered clear versions of target words in an exposure phase, and later during a test phase, received an additional exposure to those clear words immediately prior to hearing a distorted version of the words.…”

Section: Links To Hindsight Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fluency misattribution and auditory hindsight bias

et al. 2018

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We conducted three experiments to test the fluency-misattribution account of auditory hindsight bias. According to this account, prior exposure to a clearly presented auditory stimulus produces fluent (improved) processing of a distorted version of that stimulus, which results in participants mistakenly rating that item as easy to identify. In all experiments, participants in an exposure phase heard clearly spoken words zero, one, three, or six times. In the test phase, we examined auditory hindsight bias by manipulating whether participants heard a clear version of a target word just prior to hearing the distorted version of that word. Participants then estimated the ability of naïve peers to identify the distorted word. Auditory hindsight bias and the number of priming presentations during the exposure phase interacted underadditively in their prediction of participants' estimates: When no clear version of the target word appeared prior to the distorted version of that word in the test phase, participants identified target words more often the more frequently they heard the clear word in the exposure phase. Conversely, hearing a clear version of the target word at test produced similar estimates, regardless of the number of times participants heard clear versions of those words during the exposure phase. As per Roberts and Sternberg's (Attention and Performance XIV, pp. 611-653, 1993) additive factors logic, this finding suggests that both auditory hindsight bias and repetition priming contribute to a common process, which we propose involves a misattribution of processing fluency. We conclude that misattribution of fluency accounts for auditory hindsight bias.

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supporting

confidence: 67%

Section: Links To Hindsight Biasmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Links To Hindsight Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fluency misattribution and auditory hindsight bias

et al. 2018

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“…To investigate the third manifestation of the curse of knowledge, adult participants are presented with questions and asked to estimate how many of their peers will know the answers to each of the questions (e.g., Birch, Brosseau‐Liard, Haddock, & Ghrear, 2017). Importantly, the participants are taught some of the answers but not others.…”

Section: Three Manifestations Of the Curse Of Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Only Familiar Information is a “Curse”: Children’s Ability to Predict What Their Peers Know

et al. 2020

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The ability to make inferences about what one’s peers know is critical for social interaction and communication. Three experiments (n = 309) examined the curse of knowledge, the tendency to be biased by one’s knowledge when reasoning about others’ knowledge, in children’s estimates of their peers’ knowledge. Four‐ to 7‐year‐olds were taught the answers to factual questions and estimated how many peers would know the answers. When children learned familiar answers, they showed a curse of knowledge in their peer estimates. But, when children learned unfamiliar answers to the same questions, they did not show a curse of knowledge. These data shed light on the mechanisms underlying perspective taking, supporting a fluency misattribution account of the curse of knowledge.

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“…Their letter exemplifies a form of scientific egocentrism known as “the curse of knowledge”; these WFCRC authors, find difficulty suppressing the content of their personal knowledge base when trying to reason about a less informed, but still legitimate evidence-based, alternate perspective. 1 We point out 5 examples of invalid arguments from the WFCRC with rebuttal.…”

Section: In Reply To Wfcrcmentioning

confidence: 99%