The Illusion of Transparency
This post is the thirteenth part of a series of business-friendly posts, looking at cognitive biases and how they impact our ability to communicate and operate effectively.
What is it?
Overestimating how much other people are aware of your state of mind and vice versa.
Why it occurs:
People feel that their emotions and inner thoughts are immediately apparent to everyone else, because that is what they’re focusing on and hyper-aware of. They are ‘anchored’ in their own emotions and they can’t imagine that others can’t perceive them.
Where might you see it occur in real life?
If you’ve ever been in a conversation where you were keeping a secret and felt sure that it was obvious to the other person that you were hiding something, this is in part due to the illusion of transparency. Despite what we may think, no one’s mind is an open book.
You may also have seen it prominent in public speakers (which may also be amplified by the spotlight effect) in which the speaker thinks their nervousness is obvious to the audience, causing them to become more nervous and creating a loop of stress. Being aware of this illusion can reduce the anxiety markedly.
Something similar occurs at industry networking events, whereupon entering a room full of strangers, the individual feels nervous, anxious or out of place, and believes this is obvious to the crowd, when in fact no-one can tell.
Perhaps more importantly, governments and people in positions of power perceive that their motivations are obvious to everyone, and so don’t need to be communicated or elaborated on to the general public.
Why is it important?
As with the curse of knowledge, you’re assuming people have more knowledge about your emotions and thoughts than they actually do, and it hinders how you then behave, which may also have a knock on impact on your audience.
What is the impact when communicating a message?
There are two crucial factors to remember:
- No-one knows what is going on in your head unless you communicate it in some way
- You can’t tell what is going on in someone else’s head unless they communicate it in some way
This means that if you are pitching or presenting to a customer, a colleague, your manager, a supplier, whomever — no matter how anxious you might feel, no-one can tell unless you decide to stop and tell them. On a related note, if you forget to mention something in your pitch, don’t get anxious about it — no-one knows what you didn’t say but you.
On the reverse side, if motivations or intent are an important part of your presentation, make sure you properly communicate them. If something gets you excited or if you feel passionately about an idea, communicate that passion — don’t just assume people already perceive it.
In a negotiation, this can be particularly important. If you feel strongly about a specific item or preference, make sure you communicate it. Likewise, your counterpart may assume you understand what they feel strongly about, but you don’t because they haven’t communicated it. Ask probing questions about their state of mind and desires (a key and yet simple question is always “what is important to you?”).
You can download a handy quick reference infographic about this and other cognitive biases here. Next up we will take a look at the Anchoring Effect.
