The Curse of Knowledge in Reasoning About False Beliefs
The paper shows that adults, like young children, make errors in reasoning about false beliefs when the measure is sensitive enough. Adults' own knowledge of an event's outcome compromised their ability to reason about what another person believed about that event, a curse-of-knowledge bias. The perceived plausibility of the event mediated how large the bias was. The authors discuss what this means for adults' and children's social cognition.
The paper shows that adults, like young children, make errors in reasoning about false beliefs when the measure is sensitive enough. Adults' own knowledge of an event's outcome compromised their ability to reason about what another person believed about that event, a curse-of-knowledge bias. The perceived plausibility of the event mediated how large the bias was. The authors discuss what this means for adults' and children's social cognition.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-25 via OpenAlex.
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Birch, S. A. J., & Bloom, P. (2007). The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychological Science, 18(5), 382-386. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01909.x