Ep 72: Know-It-All Teens

Dr. Steven Sloman, co-author of The Knowledge Illusion and
professor at Brown University, joins Andy for a conversation on
knowledge, making deliberate decisions, and how to talk to your
teen about the gaps in their knowledge around things like vaping.


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Full show notes


“Mom! Dad! Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking
about!”


Have you ever heard these words fly out of the mouth of your
teenager?


If there were a remote control for a parent’s behavior, these
words would probably be the equivalent of the “Volume Up” button.


Why do these words sting so much? Well, press the “Pause” button
and consider this:


Your teenagers might be right. You might not know what you’re
talking about. What’s frustrating, though, is that your teens
probably don't know what they’re talking about either!


But what even were you “talking” about? Let’s take the hot-button
topic for example: teens and vaping.


Is vaping bad for teens? Your gut instinct might be to say, “Yes!
Of course it is!” But can you explain why? Can you describe how
their lungs are absorbing this vapor and how their brains are
reacting to the chemicals?


If you tell your teen that vaping is bad, but can’t explain why,
then you might just be told:


“You don’t know what you’re talking about! Shut up!”


Knowledge on a topic like teens and vaping might seem peripheral.
If you are concerned about your teens and vaping, you won’t
change their behavior by claiming knowledge you don’t have.


So what can you do? You can’t be expected to know everything
about every subject of controversy! To get some ideas, I spoke
with knowledge expert, Dr. Steven Sloman.


Dr. Sloman is a leading researcher on the human mind, a professor
at Brown University, and co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why
We Never Think Alone. He’s an expert on how humans think, and he
has one or two ideas on how to work with teens who think they
know everything. His book isn’t specifically about teens, but it
touches on prevalent issues during the teen years. I was eager to
ask Dr. Sloman about human thinking during the teenage years, and
how parents might apply his wisdom to issues like teens and
vaping.


The Illusion of Explanatory Depth


Parents of teens might be very familiar with the Illusion of
Explanatory Depth, even if they’ve never heard of it before. It
is the illusion that people understand something when in fact
they don’t.


Dr. Sloman cites a Yale study in which people were asked to rate
their knowledge of everyday objects. The subjects were presented
zippers, toilets, and pens, and asked how well they thought they
understood how each one worked. The data shows all the subjects
felt pretty confident in their understanding of such everyday
objects. But this illusion was burst when the researchers asked
the subjects to explain how those objects worked in as much
detail as possible!


As it turned out, the subjects didn’t really have much to say.
When the researchers asked the subjects to rate themselves a
second time on how well they knew those objects, they lowered
their rating. This demonstrates the Illusion of Explanatory
Depth, that people think they know more than they really do.


So this isn’t really a teen problem, or even a problem linked to
teens and vaping. It’s a people problem. Still, the Illusion of
Explanatory Depth seems to show up a lot during the teenage
years. Your teen might yell, “You don’t know what you’re talking
about,” but the Illusion of Explanatory Depth suggests your teen
doesn’t know what they’re talking about, either. In fact, they’re
more unaware than you of how much they’re living in an illusion.
How might we go about addressing issues of teens and vaping?


Why Would Anyone Live in an Illusion?


In order to address the illusion of knowledge in teens, Dr.
Sloman first asks:


“Why would anybody live in this illusion of
understanding?”


He proposes that we live this way because we fail to distinguish
what we know from what other people know. You think you
understand how the toilet works because there’s a plumber who
understands how the toilet works. You have access to the
plumber’s knowledge, but the knowledge is sitting in the
plumber’s head, not in yours.


Dr. Sloman explains that the reason we have this illusion is
because, in a sense, we do understand! It’s not every individual
that understands, but the collective communities that understand.
And communities can succeed when everyone has specialized
knowledge to share.


Who Do You Trust?


Every day we are taking advantage of other peoples’ knowledge. As
long as we can use our toilet, we don’t need to know how the
toilet works. Our lack of understanding doesn’t matter until the
toilet brakes. Then we realize how dependent we are on the
plumber.


This subconscious dependency on other people creates an
interesting scenario for teenagers. Teens are caught in a high
stakes decision where they have to choose which community they’re
going to go along with and rely on for knowledge. They’re
wondering what they should believe, how they should behave, and
who they should hang around with. Dr. Sloman points out that all
these identity questions will shape how teens experience the
illusion of knowledge.


Since teens have so much curiosity, what they choose to believe
quickly becomes a question of: Who do I trust? Whose ideas am I
going to accept?


Exposing the Illusion


Dr. Sloman explains that we make decisions by virtue of the fact
that people around us are also making decisions. For example, the
best predictor of whether or not someone will give up vaping is
whether or not their spouse has given up vaping.


When discussing teens and vaping, Dr. Sloman points out that
oftentimes kids pick up the habit from their peers. So simply
exposing your teen’s illusion of knowledge won’t be enough to
convince them to stop. In a way, it’s most effective to convince
the whole group on the issues of teens and vaping, so it’s best
to operate at the social level.


On an issue like teens and vaping it’s even harder to convince a
teen to quit because the research on vaping is somewhat
inconclusive. You can ask teens to explain how vaping works, like
in the study at Yale, but you might get a mixed bag of results.


If you sit down with kids who vape and ask them how it works, you
might easily expose their lack of understanding. They might say,


“Well, you fill it up here, you press the button here, and it
tastes like bubblegum.”


You can press them for further explanation on all three of those
steps. Even if they seem super confident in their knowledge, a
barrage of follow-up questions will quickly expose how little
they know about the device and what’s in it. You can get them to
doubt how much they know about vaping, and this is good! By
breaking attachments they have to their preexisting understanding
of teens and vaping, discussing the topic feels le...