The biggest mistake people make when trying to persuade others

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Here’s the bad news: The deeper your understanding of an issue and the stronger your conviction about the solution, the worse you often become at persuasion. It’s due to a cognitive trap that the fields of behavioral economics and neuroscience have spent decades documenting: the curse of knowledge. In other words, your knowledge has fundamentally altered your perception of what you believe others are experiencing. It applies to your persuasion—especially when you are the well-informed expert in the room.

Here’s how this curse blindsides you in persuasion. You’ve spent weeks developing a proposal to solve a complex problem. You’re now completely convinced........

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