Illusion of Explanatory Depth

The tendency to believe that one understands how a familiar thing works in more detail than one actually does, which shows up when the person tries to explain it.

• Ex: A man is sure he knows how a refrigerator keeps food cold until his daughter asks him to explain it and he cannot get past “it has a motor.”
• Ex: A student who has voted for a policy in every election discovers, when asked to explain what the policy would change, that she can describe only its name and its goal.
• Ex: A woman confidently explains why the sky is blue, stops after one sentence, and realizes the sentence was the whole explanation she had.

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Last updated: September 27, 2026 at 8:21 PM