Why is it so difficult to remember what it’s like not to know something? In this episode of Circuit Breaker: Rewiring Your Decisions, we explore the curse of knowledge — the cognitive bias that makes informed people assume others share the same understanding, context, or perspective that they do.

Discover how knowledge can unintentionally create blind spots, why experts often struggle to explain simple ideas clearly, and how this bias shapes communication, teaching, and everyday misunderstandings more than we realise.

Studies and links:

The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions | Elizabeth Newton https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/cognitive-bias/illusion-of-depth/1990-newton.pdf

Curse of Knowledge | The Decision Lab https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/management/curse-of-knowledge

Why does what we believe about ourselves change the way other people seem to treat us? In this episode of Circuit Breaker: Rewiring Your Decisions, we explore the Scar Experiment — the psychological study showing how our beliefs and insecurities can shape the way we interpret social interactions.

Discover how seeing yourself as judged, weak, or victimised can subtly change the way you act and respond to the world — and how the same mechanism can work in the opposite direction.

Studies and links:

Invisible Scars | Psychology today https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/beyond-school-walls/202410/invisible-scars

Perceptions of the Impact of Negatively Valued Physical Characteristics on Social Interaction | Robert E. Kleck and Angelo Strenta | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | Research gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Kleck/publication/232481827_Perceptions_of_the_impact_of_negatively_valued_physical_characteristics_on_social_interaction/links/56a4f54d08aeef24c58bae73/Perceptions-of-the-impact-of-negatively-valued-physical-characteristics-on-social-interaction.pdf

Why do our preferences change just because a third option is added? In this episode of Circuit Breaker: Rewiring Your Decisions, we explore the decoy effect — the phenomenon where introducing a strategically inferior option makes one of the original choices more attractive.

Discover how comparisons shape what we choose, why “irrelevant” options can steer decisions, and how to recognise when your preference is being nudged by the way choices are presented rather than what you truly want.

Studies and links:

Decoy Effect | Think Insights https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/decoy-effect

The Economist Magazine: A story of clever decoy pricing effect | The Strategy Story https://thestrategystory.com/2020/10/02/economist-magazine-a-story-of-clever-decoy-pricing/

Why do we feel more strongly about one option after a third one is added? | The Decision Lab https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/decoy-effect