In the groundbreaking paper ‘Unskilled and unaware of it’, psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning elegantly illustrate how incompetence not only leads to mistakes, but also inhibits insight to that very incompetence. In the words of Dunning & Kruger, “when people are incompetent [...] they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.”
Or to put it less elegantly; you might be too stupid to realize just how stupid you actually are.
The study was quite straightforward; Dunning & Kruger asked a group of university students to complete a number of tests of logical reasoning and of grammar. But every student also had to guess on their own performance on the test. They were asked to estimate their own abilities and also to compare those with their expectations to the classmates' abilities on the test. In other words, they had to guess whether their own performance was better or poorer than their classmates’s performances.
The figure compares the self-assessed performance of a specific test with the actual result of that test. Most participants overestimated their own abilities as compared to their peers, placing themselves in the upper third of performers. And the participants who performed most poorly, were also the participants who overestimated their own performance to the greatest extent. Meanwhile, the best performers underestimated their own performance.
Dunning & Kruger concluded that people with poor skills also lack the ability to realize their own poor performance. Their incompetence in a task inhibits their monitoring of their own performance.
The most easily understood example is spelling; if you have difficulties spelling, you will not be able to recognize your own spelling mistakes. You cannot sufficiently monitor your text and correct your flaws. Dunning & Kruger call it metacognition; it is the ability to monitor your own actions that allows you to evaluate your competence and your limitations. And if you lack the skill, you lack the metacognition.
The imperfect self-assessment of the unskilled leads to an inflated and unreal self-appraisal. This overestimation of one's own performance is now known as The Dunning-Kruger effect, and it applies to everyday actions.
This is the reason your uncle believes he knows more about covid-19 than an epidemiologist.
This is the reason your brother-in-law thinks that he is the best driver on the road, and that everybody else is in his way.
This is the reason every football fan will recognize a penalty better than the referee.
They simply lack the insight to their own incompetence.
This is the reason politicians make choices overruling the advice of experts.
This is the reason voters unlearned in the principles of democracy choose popular candidates in favour of qualified candidates (I cannot tell you what Hillary Clinton was thinking when she referred to Trump voters as a basket of deplorables, but she might have been better off by suggesting that they were unskilled in political history and consequently unable to recognize the populist candidate).
This is the reason poor leaders will not step down. They are psychologically inhibited from realizing their own lack of qualifications to govern.
The Dunning-Kruger effect has a massive impact on our daily lives. Not due to the incompetent choices we make on our own, but because of our flawed actions that affect others. The Dunning-Kruger effect applies to teachers, doctors, politicians - and to those who voted for these politicians. Every one with the ability to make choices for other people must be aware of their own limitations.
But here is the discouraging paradox; even if we know that the Dunning-Kruger effect is real, we won’t recognize the flaws in our own behaviour. The effect predicts that we cannot monitor and realize the skills, we lack.
I first read the Dunning-Kruger paper with a small group of neuroscientists. Sitting around a table in a basement under the hospital, we discussed the implications. At some point - almost simultaneously - we all realized the full impact on our own behaviour; that one of our skills, which we ourselves thought satisfactory, was in fact inadequite. We stared at each other in dismay, picking our brains, trying to recognize the flaws unaware to ourselves. One psychologist noted that she might not be as interesting a public speaker as she thought, noting that people never really cheered at the points she expected to be applauded. I myself came to the rather easy and obvious assumption that I am not as great a dancer, as I thought; partners always look scared although I myself seem to know exactly, where my feet are.
But now I have written a blog post on how the state of the world can be understood in just one figure; and that should easily uncover the blind spot of my own limitations and reveal my overestimation of my qualifications.
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Kruger J, Dunning D: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1999
Kolbert E: Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. The New Yorker. 2017
"Hillary Clinton says half of Trump's supporters are in a "basket of deplorables"". CBS News. 2016
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