“So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.”
― Criss Jami, Healology
Dunning–Kruger Effect is a type of cognitive bias but before we talk about it, let us get to know what exactly a cognitive bias is. The creation of subjective reality based on one’s perception is a cognitive bias. It generally deviates from the cultural norm and is an error in judgment. It dictates the individual’s emotions and behavior. If cognitive bias is too problematic, it can affect the important functioning of daily activities.
The phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect is where a person believes that he is highly qualified about some matter even though in reality, they are not. It is a personal overestimation of capability and smartness in any subject. People who do not have enough skills and are not completely self-aware tend to believe that they are capable enough. All the while, the truth is that they severely lack the skills and are not self-aware to recognize their low cognitive abilities.
Charles Darwin put it aptly in The Descent of Man, when he said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is something that you can witness a lot in your daily life. All the family dinners that you have where some family member starts claiming that they are highly capable and spew knowledge about a matter that they have zero expertise in and are completely wrong about is a sign of that effect. We see it every day on the internet too where some poorly informed and low-skilled fellow claims to be the best at the topic at hand whilst everyone else in the digital sphere can see it plain as daylight that he is far off on the reality.
But how did we come about Dunning-Kruger Effect? It was named after researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger who experimented on the effect. They asked participants to rate how funny jokes were in a list. People who claimed to have a brilliant sense of humor performed poorly and did not have any sense of what others would find funny. The researchers concluded that people who are poor performers often overestimate their abilities and skills. When they do encounter the poor results of their capabilities, they do not believe it. “In many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious,” David Dunning commented in a piece for Pacific Standard. “Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”
Students who are poor performers and get a bad grade, they blame the teachers or the system and proclaim that they have been treated unfairly. All the while, they fail to see that it was their incapability that led to poor results. Dunning conducted several experiments with the tweaked angles to observe the Dunning-Kruger effect and each time the result was that the more familiar or capable individual claims to be about a subject, the more incompetent they are and lack self-awareness.
You should not assume that everyone who claims that they are an expert in this matter is going through the Dunning-Kruger effect. Often, people are truly capable of whatever subject/matter they are claiming to be in. Individuals who do fall to this effect are people who have certain traits. Firstly, they will believe that they are smarter than others in the matter without any doubt. They believe that they have sharp and proper expertise in the matter. Lastly, they fail to recognize the reality that they lack the sense of self-awareness hence they cannot see that they are poorly equipped about the matter and are not capable enough.
According to Dunning, the knowledge that allows a person to recognize that they are good at a particular task breed the qualities in the person to be skilled about the matter at hand. It is why ignorant people fail to recognize their lack of skills and inadequacy.
Have you seen the segment of “Lie Witness News” on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live? If you have then you can have an easy time recognizing the Dunning-Kruger Effect that takes place in almost every interview on it. In the segment, the crew of the show goes out on the streets, makes up a story (about a celebrity, event etc.), and interviews common people about the story. More often than that, people start claiming that they know the story and go as far as to make outrageous facts about it on the spot. They do not say “I do not know” which is the truth, instead, they hide their cluelessness by lying. Now, the funny thing is that many of them convince themselves that they know what they are talking about. They are convinced that they have heard of the fake story before somewhere and start talking about it confidently. One cannot help but feel bad for the interviewees, but the fact of the matter is that if they would just admit that they are unaware of the question, it would save them a lot of embarrassment later. If you wish to witness how the Dunning-Kruger effect works its magic, you can view the videos of these interviews here.
The key to avoiding becoming a victim of this effect is to generate self-awareness. A logical and objective analysis of one’s self will allow them to take stock of their abilities and intelligence in every matter. Once you are equipped with knowledge about yourself, you will not cluelessly boast about skills that you may or may not have. Sadly, objective self-analysis is not something that most people spend their time on. For that reason alone, every other day we encounter a person exclaiming to be the master of some matter when everyone around them can see just how off they are from reality.
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