How Knowing More Can Lead To Understanding Less

An experiment was conducted in the late 1980s at Stanford university by a PhD student in psychology.

The experiment took the form of a simple game, where 2 groups of people were assigned one of two roles: 'tappers' or 'listeners'. Tappers received a list of 25 well-known songs such as 'Happy Birthday to You'.

The task of the tapper was to pick a song and tap out (by knocking on the table) the rhythm to a listener. Listener's job was simply to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped.

What do you think would be the probability of the listeners guessing the name of the song?
A. 75%
B. 50%
C. 25%
D. 2.5%

Which of the above 4 options did you choose?

In the experiment, the tappers were also asked to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. The tappers predicted 50 %, i.e. option B.

The correct outcome however was 2.5 %. In other words out of 40 songs tapped, only 1 correct guess was made.

Why did the tappers think they were getting their message across 1 time in 2, while in reality it only occurred 1 time in 40?

Here is the key insight gained from the experiment, which explains how knowing more can lead to less (mutual) understanding (between people in the group).

When a tapper taps, the person is hearing the song in his/her head. (Go on give it a try - tap the song 'Happy Birthday to You'). It's impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can't hear that tune. All they hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind if bizarre Morse Code.

In the experiment, the tappers are flabbergasted at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. Isn't the song obvious? How can you not get it?

The problem is that tappers have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it's like to lack that knowledge. When they're tapping they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song.

This is why knowing leads to less understanding.

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listener's state of mind. This is why knowing can lead to less understanding for the listeners (and of the listeners).

What is the song you are tapping?