Dunning-Kruger effect; when the ignorant think they are the smartest

Do you think you are good at estimating your own abilities and knowledge? We do not know you, but there is research that makes us think that no, you are not very good at it.

The Dunning-Kruger effect: the less we know, the smarter we think we are

The Dunning-Kruger effect it teaches us that people with fewer skills, abilities and knowledge tend to overestimate the abilities and knowledge they actually have, and vice versa. Thus, the most capable and competent are undervalued. How do you explain this strange phenomenon?

The inept criminal who tried to be invisible with lemon juice

In the mid-1990s, a rugged 44-year-old from Pittsburgh, robbed two banks of his city in broad daylight, without any kind of garb or mask covering his face. His criminal adventure ended within hours of committing both robberies, during his misdeed.

Upon being arrested, McArthur Wheeler confessed that he had applied lemon juice to his face, trusting that the juice would make him appear invisible to the cameras. "I do not understand, I used the lemon juice," he snapped between sobs at the time of the police arrest of him.

It later emerged that the unheard of juice idea was a suggestion that two of Wheeler's friends explained days before the robbery. Wheeler tested the idea by applying juice to his face and taking a picture to make sure it was effective. His face did not appear in the photograph, probably because its framing was him somewhat clumsy and he will end up focusing on the ceiling of the room instead of his face covered in juice lemon. Without realizing it, Wheeler accepted that he would remain invisible during the robbery.

Months later, Cornell University Professor of Social Psychology David Dunning couldn't believe the story of the fearless Wheeler and the lemon juice. Intrigued by the case, especially by the incompetence exhibited by the frustrated thief, he proposed to carry out an investigation with a previous hypothesis: Could it be possible that my own incompetence made me unaware of that same incompetence?

A somewhat far-fetched hypothesis, but one that made a lot of sense. To carry out the study to determine whether the hypothesis was true, Dunning chose a brilliant pupil, Justin Kruger, with the aim of finding data to confirm or refute the idea. What they found surprised them even more.

The investigation

A total of four different investigations were carried out, taking as a sample the students of the Cornell University School of Psychology. The competence of the subjects in the fields of grammar, the logic reasoning Y the humor (which can be defined as the ability to detect what is funny).

The study participants were asked, one by one, how they estimated their degree of competence in each of the named fields. Subsequently, they were made to answer a written test to check their real competition in each of the areas.

All the data were collected and the results were compared to see if any sense of correlation had been found. As you can imagine, very relevant correlations were found.

The researchers found that the greater the incompetence of the subject, the less aware he was of it. In contrast, the most competent and capable subjects were those who, paradoxically, tended to underestimate their competence the most.

Dunning and Kruger made the results and conclusions of their interesting study public. You can check the original paper here:

• “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"(Translation:" People without skills and unconscious about it: how difficulties in detecting our own incompetence lead us to overestimate our self-image ").

Conclusions on the Dunning-Kruger study

The results thrown by the paper scientific can be summarized in a series of conclusions. We can assume that, for a certain competence or with respect to a certain area of ​​knowledge, incompetent people:

1. They are unable to recognize their own incompetence.
2. They tend not to be able to recognize the competence of other people.
3. They are not able to become aware of how incompetent they are in a field.
4. If they are trained to increase their competence, they will be able to recognize and accept their previous incompetence.

More ignorant, more perceived intelligence

Consequently, the individual who boasts of knowing how to sing like an angel but his "concerts" are always deserted, is being a clear example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. We can also observe this phenomenon when experts in some field offer opinions and deliberate and calm considerations on a problem, while ignorant people on the matter believe they have absolute and simple answers to the same questions.

Do you know any professional in the Medicine? Surely he can tell you how he feels when a patient decides to take a non-prescribed medication by the doctor, based on the erroneous idea that as a patient "he already knows what is going well for him and what is not." Self-medication, in this case, is another clear example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Why does this phenomenon occur?

As Dunning and Kruger point out, this unreal perception It is because the skills and competencies necessary to do something well are precisely the skills required to be able to accurately estimate one's performance on the task.

Let's take some examples. In the event that my spelling is exceptionally bad, my knowledge necessary to detect that my level in Spelling is very low and thus to be able to correct my performance is precisely to know the rules of the orthography. Only knowing the regulations in writing am I able to become aware of my incompetence, or in the event that a third person will make me realize, warning me of the spelling mistakes I have made when writing a text. Detecting my lack of skills in this area will not automatically correct my gaps in this regard; it will only make me aware that my skills need more attention. The same happens with any other field of knowledge.

Regarding people who underestimate their abilities and skills, we could say that this occurs due to the effect of false consensus: They tend to think that “everyone does it the same”, thus assuming that their abilities are within the average. However, in reality his abilities are clearly superior.

Reflecting on the Dunning-Kruger effect

If there is something we can learn from the Dunning-Kruger effect, it is that we should not pay much attention when someone tells us that he is "very good" at something, or that he "knows a lot" about this or that thing. It will depend on how that person estimates his own capacities, which may be wrong in one way or another: good because it is overestimated, good because it undervalues his capabilities.

When it comes to finding and hiring a person who is dedicated to a complex area about which we do not have many notions (a IT, an architect, a tax advisor ...) we lack the necessary knowledge to assess their level of competence in the matter. That is why it is so valuable to consult the opinion of former clients or friends who know that specific area.

The curious thing about this psychological effect is that, in addition, those incompetent people “not only come to conclusions they make bad decisions, but their incompetence does not allow them to become aware of it, ”Dunning and Kruger.

From this reflection another is equally or more important. Sometimes the responsibility for the failures we experience throughout life is not due to other people or bad luck, but to oneself and their own decisions. For this we should carry out an exercise of self appraisal when we run into one of these obstacles in a project or job in which we are immersed.

Absolutely no one is an expert in all disciplines of knowledge and areas of life; we all have deficiencies and ignore many things. Each person has a certain potential for improvement at any point in his life stage: the mistake is to forget this point.