In 1990, a Stanford graduate student named Elizabeth Newton ran an experiment so simple it barely sounds like science.

She put people in pairs. One person got a list of 25 songs everybody knows like "Happy Birthday" and "The Star-Spangled Banner." They picked one and tapped the rhythm out on a table with a finger. The other person sat across from them and tried to name it.

Before each round, Newton asked the tapper how likely it was that their partner would get it. The tappers figured about half the time. Across 120 songs, the listeners named 3. Not half, just 2.5%.

The interesting part is why the tappers were wrong. While they tapped, they could hear the song in their heads. The melody was obvious to them, and their finger was keeping perfect time with it.

What crossed the table was a series of unrelated knocks on wood, and the tappers had no way to hear it that way.

Economists had named this problem a year earlier. Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein, and Martin Weber called it THE CURSE of KNOWLEDGE, and they were writing about markets, not music. Newton's tapping study became its most famous demonstration after Chip and Dan Heath paired the two in their book Made to Stick.

The curse is, once you know the song, you can't hear the tapping.

Which brings me to the gym. Watch an experienced trainer teach a squat to somebody who's never done one, and you may hear this.

"Initiate with a hip hinge, keep a neutral spine, brace the trunk, drive the knees out over the toes, keep the bar over midfoot, and hit depth without losing lumbar position."

Every word of that is correct. Every word of it is also a tap on a table. The client hears eight separate commands and no song at all. They'll nod, because they think they understand, and then they'll do something that looks nothing like a squat.

Try one cue instead. "Sit back like there's a chair behind you." For beginners, that single image produces more of the movement you want than eight technical instructions do.

And if it doesn't work, try a different image. The cue isn't good because the trainer likes it, it's good if the movement changes.

The sneakiest part of this curse is that expertise often makes your language shorter, not longer, and short expert language sounds like plain English.

"Brace your core" seems like a simple instruction. It isn't. It's a technical term wearing normal clothes, and you may watch a beginner respond by sucking in their stomach, which isn't the goal.

Tell them to imagine somebody's about to poke them in the gut and you'll often get the correct action on the first try.

Now flip it around.

Think about the last time a doctor explained a test result, or a mechanic told you what was wrong with your car. You nodded. You may have said it made sense. Then you got to the parking lot and realized you couldn't repeat a word of it.

You weren't slow. You were listening to tapping. They were hearing the song. They've known their subject so long they've forgotten it ever sounded like anything else.

Ask them to say it a different way. That isn't a confession that you're lost, it's how you get somebody to stop tapping. If you're the one teaching, here are three suggestions.

First: Watch what people do instead of what they say. A beginner will tell you they understand, because they honestly believe they do. The next rep tells you the truth. If the movement changes, the cue landed. If it didn't, don't stack a second cue on top. Replace the first one.

Second: Don't ask "does that make sense," because you'll get a yes. Ask them to show you, or to put it in their own words. Their words, not yours. Repeating your sentence back proves nothing.

Third: Start with the least information that produces the result you want. Add further explanation afterward, for the people who want it.

One person hears a song. The other hears knocking. Don't ask whether you explained it right. Look across the table and find out what they heard.

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Reference Links:

The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions

Elizabeth Louise Newton
PhD dissertation, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Published June 1990

Click Here for the paper: https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/cognitive-bias/illusion-of-depth/1990-newton.pdf

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8/27/2026