Have you ever come across someone who has complete confidence in performing a task despite his obvious incompetence? Or perhaps someone doubting his abilities despite his obvious skill? Well, this phenomenon has a name: the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
In truth, we’ve probably all done it at some point in our lives.
David Dunning and Justin Kruger, both psychology professors at Cornell University at the time, explained the effect in their 1999 research. Without the “metacognitive ability” to recognize one’s own deficiencies, they argued, one might not understand what they don’t understand. A person would have to “possess at least a minimum level of the same kind of knowledge or competence, which those who exhibit the effect have not attained.”
Their research included 45 undergraduate students answering a 20-question test of logic followed by a self-assessment and a guess of their peers’ performance. Their research showed that most people consider themselves better than average. Interestingly, both the highest performers (answering 17 questions correctly) and the lowest (answering 10 questions correctly) guessed that they answered 14 questions correctly. The least skilled, the study concluded, were both unskilled and unaware of it.
Or as Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
But this does not indicate overall intelligence, by any means. A highly competent person can just as easily be affected by this phenomenon. Psychology Today explains, "Many individuals mistakenly believe that their experience and skills in one particular area are transferrable to another.”
The double curse is the effect, and it is when a person not only performs poorly but is not self-aware enough to realize it. Sadly, this is a missed opportunity for growth and learning.
And this is why the basis of their reasoning is metacognition, which is the ability to examine yourself objectively. Socrates would agree! He said, “Know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”
As science is intended, additional studies followed and there were dissenting opinions. Published papers in 2016 and 2017 (in a mathematics journal called Numeracy) found that the effect was more of a biased view – a mirage. But in fairness to the original research, the effect has also been reproduced many times.
And that is the gold standard of scientific research. Replicability.
1. Was it reasonable to extrapolate such findings after only 45 undergraduate subjects were studied? Perhaps not.
2. Is it possible that the findings of the study are actually an example of the effect, that Dunning and Kruger, themselves, made too many overarching assumptions? Maybe!
3. Is it also possible that, overall, people over and underestimate their abilities for a variety of reasons, including environment, psychological protection, and incorrect learning from trusted sources? Absolutely.
And the name itself became quite popular long after the original work. In May of 2017, Google Trends shows a surge in the search for “dunning kruger,” according to the Washington Post. What was happening at that time? It was the election and presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. In essence, people wondered if Trump knew what he was talking about, or if he was over-selling his skills.
An interesting article from McGill University, authored by Jonathan Jarry, explained the effect after his conversation with Dr. Dunning. Dr. Dunning clarified his research, saying “The effect is about us, not them…The lesson of the effect was always about how we should be humble and cautious about ourselves. Dr. Dunning also clarified the word “uninformed” and downgraded it to “misinformed.”
In a Forbes magazine article, a small anecdote offers support for the abstractions behind the Dunning-Kruger effect. From more than 10,000 online quiz responses, only 39% of employees dissect and evaluate constructive criticism they receive in the workplace. This doesn’t presume the other 61% are sitting in the pool of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but it does show that a majority of people simply do not want to evaluate themselves when others see them in a negative light.
On the flip side, we might find the very interesting Imposter Syndrome, where people are plagued with self-doubt. But I’ll save that for another blog post!
Can you remember a time when you over or underestimated your skills?
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