People on social media are constantly saying that they are the best proof of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The attack associated with the popular science term is that someone thinks they are smart precisely because they are particularly stupid.
Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger presented their theory in a 1999 paper. Accordingly, people with little knowledge in the respective area overestimate themselves because they don’t even know what they don’t know.
It’s great to have so much publicity, Dunning said recently in a “Scientific America” podcast. But he wishes the term wasn’t used as a slur, “because it’s really about thinking about yourself and knowing that there might be things you don’t know. It’s not about judging other people.”
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Sometimes ridiculed and even controversial among experts, the effect, which sounds so obvious, has a huge fan base among the public. Because everyone has the impression from time to time that the person they are talking to knows very little about a topic, but considers themselves to be the greatest experts.
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“You come across this quite often in everyday life,” says social psychologist Hans-Peter Erb from the Helmut Schmidt University – University of the Bundeswehr Hamburg. “Those who shout loudest are usually those who have the least idea.”
Dunning emphasizes that this is not about stupidity in general. The effect affects everyone sooner or later in a specific area – after all, an art connoisseur doesn’t necessarily know much about medicine. The Corona pandemic has shown how powerful the phenomenon can be, in which non-experts such as law professors presented supposedly groundbreaking but actually completely absurd results.
Because they don’t know that they don’t know anything
According to Dunning and Kruger, the paradoxical tendency to overestimate oneself can lead those who know little to self-confidently make nonsensical decisions. It may be dangerous. For the person who makes a medical diagnosis after a Google search or who thinks they are the new stock market expert after watching three instructional videos. For others, when the 18-year-old novice driver thinks he drives better than everyone else. And for companies when employees do not understand the consequences of their actions.
According to the two US psychologists, the basis of the phenomenon is that people are generally poor at realistically assessing their knowledge, skills or performance: According to studies, more than 90 percent of US drivers are convinced that they are above-average drivers.
“And when surveyed about their own contribution to housework, the families’ overall value is usually well over 100 percent,” explains social psychologist Erb. Mathematically, the value cannot be more than 100 – so individual family members overestimate their contribution.
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It’s also clear when it comes to sports, financial issues or views on the climate crisis: people quickly believe that they know everything and can have a say, if not even know the perfect solution. One of the most well-known examples: There are an incredible number of self-proclaimed football experts in Germany.
Dunning, now at the University of Michigan, and Kruger, currently at New York University, discovered the effect in series of tests with students. They were supposed to complete questionnaires and at the end assess how well they performed compared to the others.
In the worst quarter of all times, many people believed they were doing much better – even when they saw the bows of the best participants. They were simply unable to notice their own incompetence or to recognize – and recognize – the competence of people with more specialist knowledge. Subjects who performed particularly well, on the other hand, were more likely to underestimate their performance.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect as a Career Booster
Together with Carmen Sanchez from Cornell University in New York, Dunning presented further results in 2018. Accordingly, knowing a little bit about it leads to clear Dunning-Kruger effects.
Various tests showed that beginners initially approach something with respect. However, as soon as they have acquired their first small skills, they tend to seriously overestimate themselves. A little experience – and the ego gallops away from the performance.
But why does such a cognitive distortion even exist when it can have so many negative consequences? On the one hand, overconfidence strengthens self-esteem and confidence in one’s own abilities, as Erb explains. This could also have a positive effect on health. “And those who have more confidence in themselves usually achieve more.” Self-confident ignorant people often get further in their careers than smarter, low-level thinkers.
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This is also due to the influence on others: people who overestimate themselves are often perceived as particularly competent and decisive, says Erb. Experts are much more aware of the complexity of a subject – and their self-confidence is even lower given the abundance of reservations and details that need to be taken into account. So the simpleton who spreads nonsense in the fullest tone of conviction triumphs over the more insecure and clever one.
Erb is convinced that the public hardly wants to hear assessments like “It’s not clear, there are arguments for and against” anymore. Supposedly simple solutions are much more popular, especially since the transfer of information has generally been flattening for decades.
This is taken to the extreme by former US President Donald Trump, who is currently making attempts for a possible renewed presidency. His simple phrases would be very well received by a certain clientele. Whether Trump is acting this way out of calculation or because he himself is heavily affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect cannot be said with certainty, says Erb.
Just a mathematical artifact?
The Dunning-Kruger effect may support some careers – but it also represents a trap for those affected: those who believe they are all-knowing are less likely to take advantage of opportunities to further their education. And he often unjustifiably devalues others. “It is therefore very important to constantly remind yourself that it is easy to overestimate yourself in many areas,” emphasizes Erb.
People in other cultures that are less focused on individualism often do this better, explains the social psychologist. Analyzes in Japan, for example, showed that people there tend to underestimate their abilities and are therefore more motivated to constantly improve.
The Dunning-Kruger effect has hardly found its way into specialist literature – probably because it seems too trivial. More than 400 years ago, the English poet William Shakespeare included the sentence in his play “As You Like It”: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” (“The fool thinks he is wise, but the wise man knows he is a fool.”)
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In addition, there are certainly critical voices about the original work from 1999. The mathematician Eric Gaze from Bowdoin College in Brunswick (USA) pointed out last year on “The Conversation”, a platform for contributions from researchers and academics, that the mathematical approach , which was used to demonstrate the effect, may be incorrect.
The calculation method exaggerates the overestimation of the bottom 25 percent of participants, according to Gaze, who, together with other researchers, had already questioned the effect in a study presented in 2017. The statistical artifact is known as regression to the mean: people who do very poorly on a test can almost only overestimate themselves. However, those who perform very well can easily underestimate themselves.
It should also be taken into account that the majority of people generally assume that they are better than average; This also applies to the least talented people, explained Gaze. Participants with the lowest scores on such tests did not estimate their objective performance significantly less accurately than those with higher ones. In general, experts assess their abilities more accurately than beginners and women, on average, assess their abilities better than men.
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Gaze is convinced that the Dunning-Kruger effect is more of an artifact of research design than a distortion in human thinking. Dunning explained that only the original study would be taken into account for the criticism. However, there were then a number of studies in which regression to the mean was tested. These 25 years of research would be ignored.
Even though there may be statistical limitations, he doesn’t doubt the connection itself, says Erb. “I believe in the Dunning-Kruger effect.”