Behaviouronomics: Curse of Knowledge

Sometimes our two eyes aren’t enough to see the obvious. This behavioural bias literally makes us blind to what’s right in front of our eyes.

“See, if you want to reverse the car towards left, you have to turn the steering wheel towards left.” I told my wife while I was trying to teach her reverse parking. She drives pretty well but wasn’t very comfortable with reverse parking then.

“But when I turn left, the car is going towards right!” she exclaimed.

“No! The car is going towards left. See, the left tail lamp is going left,” I showed her in the side view mirror. My quota of patience was rapidly dwindling.

“Yeah but the right head lamp is going towards right,” She pointed towards the right head lamp which was obviously moving towards right. Of course, it had to. If you are focusing on the front the nose of the car will seem to go towards right.

“But why are you focusing on the front head lamp? When you’re reversing your point of reference should be the tail lamp.” I was confused.

“Then why didn’t you explicitly tell me that before?” She demanded.

“I thought you would…” Before I could complete that sentence, a light went on in my head. A Eureka kind of moment!

We were both right about “where the car was going” but our definitions of “where the car was going” were inconsistent. She was looking forward while reversing the car, like many amateur drivers do, while I assumed that she was looking back.

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