Knowledge Advocate

Classic situation. We are excited. And chatty. Could be about the Galapagos islands, a great new indie band, an obscure dish we had at an ethnic restaurant. Doesn’t matter what it is: we are excited about it. We have lots to say.

Here’s the thing: none of it makes any sense to the folks we talk to at that time! What’s up with that?

Elizabeth Newton, a Stanford Ph.D. in psychology, wanted to know more. She designed an experiment. Asked for volunteers. They sat down in the laboratory. No white coats — just their fingers and ears (those were the key parts in the study anyway).

One person tapped out a song on the lab table; sitting nearby was the other person, ears wide open, trying to guess what the taps were all about. So: one tapper, one listener, and a whole lot of stuff in one person’s head (the tapper) that was maybe or maybe not in the other person’s head (the listener). That is what the experiment was all about. And there were more than one set of these tappers and listeners. You know, to deal with the “four out of five dentists” kind of statistical stuff.

The songs were really popular songs. Like the happy birthday song, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Jingle Bells, this kind of thing. So popular, in fact, that the tappers on average thought that the listeners would get it right about half the time. 50%! That’s because they were singing the tune in their head! It made complete sense to them.

Do you wanna know what actually happened? And mind you, this is the genius of the experiment. Elizabeth asked the listener to name the songs. Oh… and they tried. Guess how they did? Terribly. As a matter of fact, they hit about a 3% accuracy rate. Yikes. Now, that is a huge gap between perception (they’ll get it right 50% of the time) and reality (3%). What to make of this?

Turns out, when something is in our head and we already did all the work to get it in there in the first place, it’s easy to forget others might not have the same stuff in their heads as we do. If that is so and we go ahead and try and explain it to someone (whether it’s a song, a story line, or a news clip) we often skip the foundation stuff and give only tiny pieces of the bigger story we already figured out.

Like in the experiment, we “tap” out bits and pieces of the thing we are talking about and leave the vast majority of  the “need to know” stuff in our own heads. That means the person we talk with often has slim to no chance of having the same stuff lighting up in their heads that is lighting up in ours.

So what?

Well, at least now we know why we, and others, make so little sense sometimes. We “get it,” or they “get it,” and we or they neglect to say how it is we know what we know and for what reasons we know what we know to someone who is just catching up.

Now what?

Well, do something about it. Slow down your speaking rate, provide a foundation of what is being said, and pause lots to allow clarifying questions from the other person. Connect what he or she already knows with what you are saying, use metaphors, simple analogies, offer context as well as content. Help him or her out, “throw them a bone,” as the saying goes when more facts are needed to make sense of things.

Unless of course, you really enjoy making absolutely no sense!