Dunning-Kruger effect

February 20, 2022. No. 162

When you don't know something, and you think you know everything, it's the worst thing that can happen to you in life. Just now I discovered thanks to a video on YouTube, that this has a term and has been well studied for many years, and it is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Incompetent people think they know a lot, and it is something that ends up taking its toll on them in the long run. Incompetence is accompanied by too much self-confidence. As a popular saying goes: Ignorance is very daring. Surely perhaps you have experienced it at some time in your day today. It was investigated by social psychologists Justin Kruger and David Dunning in a study that was published in 1999, called: Unskilled and Unaware of it: Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

The study in general is made up of 4 substudies, where the researchers found that the participants who did worse in tests of humor, grammar, and logic, tended to overestimate and by a lot, that they had done so. The researchers concluded, among other aspects, that this was because these participants had a lower metacognitive ability, which is precisely what allows us to realize our own beliefs, experiences, or, in this case, specific abilities. It is that effect, to realize that I am doing badly in a grammar test, I would have to have knowledge of the grammar rules, but if I am aware of them, then I would do better. That ability that I don't have that would allow me to do the test better, is the same one that doesn't let me see how badly I'm doing, and then I think if I do it well. Quite confusing, but it usually happens to us at least once or many times in life to all of us.

Over time, the researchers found that as the participants improved their skills, they became more aware of recognizing their own limitations.

Mood test

This graph is shown as in the study, with a humor test. The circles indicate the actual score on this test and the square is how the participants perceive themselves to be good on that test. It is evident that the participants who do the worst are those who believe to a greater extent than they did it well. Already at the other level, the distances are shortened, since they are more realistic of their own limitations. Even the latter was undervalued, and this tends to be called Impostor Syndrome, where the more capabilities we have, the less we realize about them.

There are people in the world who think about everything, they think they know everything, they try to convince others, but in reality, they don't know what they are talking about at all. Although you may have someone in mind right now who you think suffers from this effect, the reality is that it happens to all of us. Some with more force than others, but in reality, we can all suffer it.

This happens a lot when you are learning a subject, or studying something in a self-taught way. You see a few tutorials about it, and you think you've mastered the software and are capable of creating super cool movies and videos. Very far from reality. Because when you collide with that reality, you realize that you are barely at the tip of the iceberg and that all you have left to discover is a world under your feet.

At least I think I am aware of this, and I recognize that I must always be in constant movement and learning new techniques and methods to improve in every way.

What do you think? Has this happened to you or do you know someone like this?