The Curse of Knowing: The Influence of Explicit Perspective-Awareness Instructions on Perceivers’ Perspective-Taking

This study investigated whether an explicit and stimulatedattention to the mental states of an uninformed other fostersperspective-taking. The experimental aim of this study wastwofold. First, we aimed to replicate Keysar’s (1994) curse ofknowledge effect, indicating how privileged information biasescorrect perspective-judgments. The second aim was toinvestigate whether this curse of knowledge effect diminishesby explicit instructions to become aware of another person’sperspective. Findings showed that we replicated Keysar’s(1994) curse of knowledge effect. Perceivers were more likelyto impute their perception of speaker’s sarcasm onto anuninformed addressee when their privileged informationsuggested that the speaker was being sarcastic rather than beingsincere. Findings further revealed that perceivers were just aslikely to overestimate the extent to which their privateperspective was shared by an uninformed addressee, regardlessof their explicit and stimulated attention to this addressee’sperspective.