Challenging The "Illusion of Understanding"

Corporate defendants and their insurers know very well that jurors--especially plaintiff jurors--love to opine freely on topics that they genuinely know nothing about.

For example, in patent cases, jurors know exactly how the USPTO examines patent applications. In medmal cases, they know exactly why the plaintiff's rare cancer wasn't diagnosed.  In products cases, they know exactly why the manufacturer ignored an "obvious" defect.  Of course, nearly all these things that jurors know are really just illusions of knowledge, and coincidentally, happen to be good for plaintiffs and bad for defendants.

So, is there any way to combat this reliance on illusion?  Maybe.

Dr. Philip Fernbach, from the University of Colorado, and some colleagues, discovered a way to challenge and undermine some kinds of this illusory knowledge. They described the method it in their paper "Political Extremism Is Supported by an Illusion of Understanding." 

It's long been known that people think they understand complex phenomena in far more depth than they actually do (Rosenblit & Keil, 2002).  Whether it's an airliner, a lawn sprinkler, or local anesthesia, we may get the basic principles of how something works, but we don't know as many operational details as we think we do.  If you doubt this, just remember the last time you tried to repair a mechanical thingee around the house and found yourself saying: "Oh. So thaaat's how it works."

Anyway, Fernbach and his colleagues explored extreme political views and found that asking research subjects to explain their policy prescriptions in detail caused the subjects to recognize the limits of their knowledge and to then soften strident views.  Attempting to explain how a complex process worked when they really didn't understand it caused Fernbach's subjects to recognize the limits of their knowledge and opened them up to persuasion by opponents.

So, in cases with a complex process or procedure at issue when you truly think your explanation is best, ask jurors to decide not only what happened, but also the details of how it happened.