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The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that leads better-informed parties to find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed parties. The effect was first described in print by the economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber, though they give original credit for suggesting the term to Robin Hogarth. An example of this bias would be of a tailor selling clothes. Because the tailor has made a dress, he is intimately familiar with the quality of the item in craftsmanship, features, and fabric quality. When pricing a dress for sale, however, he needs to take the point of view of an uninformed customer- someone might be walking into the store with no previous knowledge of the owner, dressmaker, or how difficult or easy the item is to make. The tailor, as hard as he might try to take the point of view of the customer, cannot completely separate himself from the knowledge he has of the quality of this dress, and therefore will assume a customer will value and pay much more for the dress than is actually true. == History of concept== The term "curse of knowledge" was coined in the ''Journal of Political Economy'' by economists Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber. The aim of their research was to document the idea that making bad judgments can be due to being unable to predict the actions of lesser informed parties. The economic impacts of this bias are described as two-fold: better informed parties may suffer losses in a deal when they should not, and that the curse of knowledge can somewhat cancel out market consequences resulting from information asymmetry, one party knowing more than the other and being at an advantage because of it.〔 The idea that better informed parties may suffer losses in a deal or exchange was seen as something important to bring to the sphere of economic theory. Most theoretical analyses of situations where one party knew less than the other focused on how the lesser informed party attempted to learn more information to minimize information asymmetry. However, in these analyses, there is an assumption that better-informed parties can optimally exploit their information asymmetry when they, in fact, cannot. People cannot ignore their additional, better, information, even when they should in a bargaining situation.〔 For example, two people are bargaining over dividing money or provisions. One party may know the size of the amount being divided while the other does not. However, to fully exploit his advantage, the informed party should make the same offer regardless of the amount of material to be divided. 〔 Myerson, Roger B. "Negotiation in Games: A Theoretical Overview". In ''Un-certainty, Information, and Communication: Essays in Honor of Kenneth J. Arrow'', vol. 3, edited by Walter P. Heller, Ross M. Starr, and David A. Starrett. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986.〕 But informed parties actually offer more when the amount to be divided is larger. 〔Forsythe, Robert; Kennan, John; and Sopher, Barry. "An Experimental Analysis of Bargaining and Strikes with One Sided Private Information." Working Paper no. 87-4. Iowa City: Univ. Iowa, Dept. Econ., 1987.〕 〔Banks, Jeff; Camerer, Colin F.; and Porter, David. "Experimental Tests of Nash Refinements in Signaling Games." Working paper. Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania, Dept. Decision Sci., 1988.〕 Informed parties are unable to ignore their better information, even when they should.〔 In the 1989 publication, Camerer, Loewenstein, and Weber state that: "All the previous evidence of the curse of knowledge has been gathered in psychological studies of individual judgments," referring readers to Baruch Fischhoff's work from 1975, which also involves the hindsight bias.〔 Fischhoff's work focused on hindsight bias, a cognitive bias that implies knowing the outcome of a certain event makes it seem more predictable than may actually be true. His work was specifically on how it can be known and accounted for by individuals.〔 In one experiment by Fischhoff it was shown that participants did not know that their outcome knowledge affected their responses, and, if they did know, they could still not ignore or defeat the effects of the bias.〔 Fischhoff, Baruch. "Hindsight & Foresight: The Effect of Outcome Knowledge on Judgment under Uncertainty". ''J. Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 1'' (August 1975): 288-99.〕 These participants could not successfully reconstruct their previous, less knowledgeable states accurately, which directly relates to the curse of knowledge. This poor reconstruction was theorized by Fischhoff to be because the participant was "anchored in the hindsightful state of mind created by receipt of knowledge."〔 This receipt of knowledge returns to the idea of the curse proposed by Camerer, Loewenstein, and Weber: a knowledgeable person cannot accurately reconstruct what a person, be it themselves or someone else, without the knowledge would think, or how they would act. In his paper, Fischoff questions the failure to empathize with ourselves in less knowledgeable states, and notes that how well people manage to reconstruct perceptions of lesser informed others is a crucial question for historians and "all human understanding."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Curse of knowledge」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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