The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Ignorance is Bold

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias which causes less competent people in a given field to overestimate their abilities and those more competent to underestimate them. It would be something like some ignorant people think they know a lot and those who really know consider themselves ignorant.

In this way, those who are victims of this bias, They have an illusion of superiority by evaluating their competence as above average. And furthermore, they also tend to underestimate the most competent.

This effect was demonstrated in a study published in 1999 by Dunning and Justin Kruger, two researchers in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Now, a curious fact is that the Dunning-Kruger effect seems typical only of Western societies. When trying to replicate it in Asia, the researchers found that the exact opposite was true.

What does research say about the Dunning-Kruger effect?

Dunning and Kruger’s 1999 research developed an interesting theme for psychology: that people’s perception of their own ability often does not match reality. Their research involved four studies that assessed participants’ actual and perceived skills in humor, logical reasoning, and English grammar.

In the grammar study, 84 college students completed a knowledge test of American Standard Written English and then rated their own grammatical ability and performance on the test.

Those who scored the lowest on the test overestimated both their perceived grammatical ability and the test score. In contrast, those who scored highest underestimated their ability and their test score.

Corroborating these findings, in another study, researchers asked students and others to evaluate their performance immediately after taking several tests. The results showed, on average, that:

Low performers expected to score 60 percent, yet they scored 38.4 percent. Average performers expected 72.6 percent and scored 61.7 percent. People at a higher level expected to score 75.6 percent and got a score of 84.1 percent.

Why the Dunning-Kruger effect occurs

This effect is due to what is called “double charge”. People are not only incompetent; Their incompetence robs them of the mental capacity to realize it. In general, incompetent people tend to:

Overestimating your skill levels. Failing to recognize other people’s genuine skill and experience. Failing to recognize your own mistakes and lack of skill.

According to the Dunning-Kruger theory, the explanation for this phenomenon would be that incompetent people do not precisely have the skills necessary to distinguish themselves from those who have more capabilities. People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware. Other explanations that have been given are:

Lack of metacognition

This effect is also associated with problems in the use of metacognition. People can only evaluate themselves from their own perspective. From this limited point of view, they appear highly skilled and superior to others. Because of this, it is difficult for them to have a more realistic view of their abilities (McIntosh et al., 2019).

Lack of knowledge can lead to overconfidence

Lack of knowledge can lead people to believe they know everything there is to know. A person may have the slightest awareness about a topic, but thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, he believes that he is an expert. Other factors that may contribute to the effect are:

The use of heuristics or mental shortcuts that allow people to make decisions quickly. A tendency to look for patterns even where they do not exist.

Inability to recognize lack of ability

Skills deficits cause a double problem. First, these deficits cause people to perform poorly in the domain in which they are incompetent. Secondly, their erroneous and deficient knowledge does not allow them to recognize their shortcomings.

In other words, the incompetence that leads them to make bad decisions is the same one that deprives them of the ability to recognize said ability. They are unable to recognize it both in themselves and in others. In fact, there is a whole mass of mediocre people, on an intellectual level, who make a living by making us believe that they are authors of special genius and that they are full of charisma. In general, they usually do it because they are attractive to us.

The results of Kruger and Dunning’s studies can have several interpretations. However, often the effect caused is the following. Of all the people who carry out a specific task, the least trained believe that they are very prepared to carry it out. On the contrary, the best ones tend to be less confident in their abilities.

The reason for the success of the incompetent

We find the explanation for the success of these people by a captivating idea known as the just world fallacy. According to this, the results we obtain in life are always deserved. People who think this way believe that everyone is in a certain position because they deserve it based on their merits. Therefore, although it may not seem like it, “there must be something.”

What we see is that incompetent people think they are better than they really are. But they generally do not believe themselves to be as good as those who are, in fact, good. It’s important pointing that Dunning and Kruger have never claimed that incompetent people think they are better than competent people.. They simply believe that they are really better than they are, and they proclaim it.

There is a huge mismatch between how incompetent people perceive their own performance and how it really is. This discrepancy is much smaller for highly competent people, which presents a serious problem for both groups.

For those who are really not very skilled, the Dunning-Kruger effect prevents them from improving. Until you recognize your mistakes, you will never be able to overcome them. On the contrary, for those who are already good, this bias prevents them from shining their full potential. And it is that Self-confidence is essential to success.

Examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect

If, for example, you are not very good at languages, it can be difficult to realize this. This happens because The skills you would need to be able to distinguish someone who is good from one who is not are precisely what you lack. If you can’t hear the difference between two different phonemes, how would you know who can pronounce like a native and who can’t? If you understand few words of a foreign language, how would you evaluate the size of your own vocabulary compared to that of others?

Or perhaps, you have heard many times a person talk about a topic about which they know absolutely nothing. On the contrary, those who really know about something tend to stay silent. This can even be observed in the media. In them, more attention is paid to people who show confidence, even if they are not right.

Effects on behavior and decisions

The Dunning-Kruger effect can affect what people believe, the decisions they make, and the actions they take.

In research, Ehrlinger and Dunning found that women performed the same as men on a science test, but they underestimated their performance because they believed they had less scientific reasoning ability than men. Additionally, they found that these women were more likely to refuse to participate in a science competition because of this belief.

Conclusion

Simplified to the extreme, the Dunning-Kruger theory can be understood as follows. While the ignorant believe themselves to be good, those who are truly ignorant are judged to be incompetent.

Without a doubt, overcoming this effect is essential for our society. Therefore, if at any time you believe that you are in possession of the truth, don’t shut up. It is necessary for wise people to begin to trust themselves more.

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