Today, we are going to learn about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Now, let’s begin.
How intelligent do you think you are? Can you accurately predict your own skill level or judge the intelligence of your ideas? In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, two social psychologists, discovered that people are exceptionally poor judges of their abilities, revealing a cognitive bias that impacts almost everyone on the planet. This cognitive bias is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Imagine someone sitting down to play chess for the first time. He believes he is intelligent—maybe more intelligent than average—so he assumes he can play chess better than the average person. But chess is a complicated game that he knows almost nothing about.
In other words, this person has a distorted perception of their own abilities. They fail to accurately predict their performance on a given task because they overestimate their intelligence. They’re extremely confident in their abilities even though they don’t know what they’re doing. This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect at work.
David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that people who know very little about a subject are more likely to overestimate their abilities, causing a large disparity between their predicted performance and their actual performance. But why are poor-performers so confident in their abilities? Why does this cognitive bias warp your understanding of your intelligence?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is often created by a lack of self-awareness. Less intelligent people overestimate their abilities because they’re unaware of what they do not know. In other words, humans become overconfident when we cannot recognize the gaps in our knowledge.
Let’s go back to our chess player, who thinks he’s a grandmaster without playing a single game of chess. He doesn’t know what it means to play chess at a high-level. He doesn’t understand the patterns and strategies used by great players, so he assumes he knows everything there is to know. He overvalues his natural intelligence and undervalues his lack of experience and expertise. But if you don’t have experience with a subject, you cannot understand what it means to perform at a higher level. It’s like walking on the beach—the water washing over your ankles—assuming you could walk anywhere in the ocean just because you can walk in the shallows.
You have no experience in deeper water. You don’t know what it’s like to fight the current or swim down to the ocean floor. So, your perception of your abilities is muddled by your lack of experience and awareness. Ignorant people make the same faulty assumptions. They assume they know everything. They overestimate their intelligence, and they fail to recognize their shortcomings. Because they cannot identify their mistakes, they can’t learn or improve.
They can’t distinguish between ignorance and excellence because they don’t understand what is required to achieve excellence in a given field. We call these requirements the standards of performance. They’re the hurdles and challenges one must overcome to excel in any field. Some of these hurdles are things you need to learn and practice. Others are mistakes you need to understand and avoid.
To paraphrase David Dunning, the skills required to succeed at a task are identical to the skills required to recognize your failures. If you cannot do one, you cannot do the other. But how does the relationship between confidence and expertise change as expertise increases?
Imagine you’re walking deeper into the ocean when suddenly the ocean floor disappears beneath you. Suddenly, you realize that the ocean is deeper and more complex than you thought. In that moment, your perspective changes. You thought you knew everything. You assumed you could walk anywhere you wanted, but now you’ve encountered something that contradicts your point of view. You thought you had the ocean all figured out, until you encountered a gap in your knowledge. How does that change your thinking?
Many ignorant people don’t respond well to contradictions. If you present a challenging argument, their response is typically defensive or avoidant. This person is overconfident in their intelligence, so they’re convinced their understanding is better than yours. Unfortunately, this is a very common occurrence. They cannot evaluate their ideas or choices because their understanding is limited to one, very narrow point of view. They believe what they’re saying is intelligent, even if others recognize the obvious flaws in their understanding.
But no one likes to be wrong, especially ignorant people. No one wants to figure out that their understanding of the world is flawed or foolish. That’s why narrow-minded people display an unrelenting loyalty to their opinions. This person thinks they’re right because they want to be right… and nothing you say is going to change their mind. But what happens when someone chooses to expand their perspective? What if someone opens their mind to new knowledge, and that new knowledge changes their view of the world? Will they become more confident or less confident in their intelligence?
David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered that confidence decreases as people gain expertise. Ignorant people are fiercely dedicated to their ideas because they do not understand anything else; however, changing in your perspective reveals a myriad of unknowns you didn’t know existed. Think about our chess player, who still believes he is the cream of the crop. What happens when our chess player encounters a much more talented opponent, someone with a sophisticated understanding of the game? No matter how hard he tries, our chess player loses every single game.
So, he reacts defensively. He criticizes the game of chess. He insults the other player; until eventually, he decides to open his mind. He buys a book on chess to learn more about the game. He researches strategies used by some of the greatest players, and he starts identifying mistakes in his gameplay. Like many curious amateurs, he begins to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information he doesn’t understand.
He was so confident in his abilities before, but now he’s aware of his limitations. He’s beginning to understand the standards of performance. While new knowledge accelerates his understanding of the game, it also cripples his confidence. Just like ignorant people overestimate their abilities, intelligent people underestimate their abilities.
Suddenly, you’re aware of an overwhelming number of questions and mysteries. You finally recognize how challenging your field really is. Naturally, your confidence in your abilities sinks to an all-time low. Even though you are more capable than you were, you no longer value confidence over experience or expertise. You view yourself as an amateur with a lot to learn, even if you know much more than the average person. That’s one reason why intelligent people underestimate their abilities, but there’s one more. When you investigate a subject, and gain vital experience, you make another set of faulty assumptions.
An ignorant person cannot clearly see the road ahead of them, but an intelligent person cannot clearly see the road behind. In other words, intelligent people belittle their own expertise. You assume anyone can achieve your level of mastery. You assume the challenges you’ve overcome are simple or easy, no matter how difficult they really are.
Return to our chess player.
Now, he’s played over a hundred games. He’s studied different strategies. He’s incorporating more sophisticated ideas into his gameplay. In other words, he’s explored the depth of his field, and his perspective on the game has changed. Yet he underestimates his abilities. Even after he wins his first chess tournament, his confidence is much lower than it was at the very beginning. He plays a better game of chess, but he does not accurately value his new experience or expertise.
For this reason, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is often graphed as an upside down curve. On one end of the curve, expertise is low, and confidence is high. As expertise increases, confidence decreases. But eventually, you reach a turning point, where an intelligent person realizes how little they understand. Once you reach rock bottom, your confidence begins to increase. Your field starts to make sense. You begin to draw conclusions on your own and put complicated theories into practice. In other words, as expertise evolves into mastery, your confidence gradually increases. But it’s a very different kind of confidence.
The quiet confidence of a growing expert is nothing like defensive confidence at the other end of the spectrum. A growing expert only feels confidence in his abilities because he respects the difficulty of his field. He may be a leader in the industry. He may be an artist beloved by millions; yet he knows he has not learned everything there is to learn. He knows he will never have mastered his field. This mindset is what separates a confident amateur from a confident expert. Confident amateurs believe they know all there is to know.
They think they have all the answers, and they actively criticize anyone who argues with their ideas. On the other hand, experts are well-aware of the gaps in their understanding. They believe in their abilities, but they know their shortcomings better than anyone. So, what can we take away from Dunning and Kruger’s research?
Intelligence, and our perception of our intelligence, is often a paradox. We can’t know what we don’t know until we know it. Often, recognizing our lack of knowledge is more significant than finding actual answers. So, how do you properly judge your strengths and weaknesses? How do you stop yourself from overestimating your intelligence? The simple answer is… don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. Many people equate ignorance with stupidity, but they’re two very different things. An intelligent person isn’t afraid to admit their ignorance because ignorance can change. Questions can be answered.
The only real way to properly judge yourself is to learn as much as you can because no one knows everything. No one has all the answers. So, take a deeper interest in the things you believe. Make an effort to widen your perspective, and most of all… keep your ego out of the equation.
credit: TopThink
