Dunning-Kruger Effect: Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing
And 3 ways to help you avoid this cognitive bias
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” -- Bertrand Russell
David Dunning and Justin Kruger were two social psychologists just doing their thing when they saw a ridiculous story on the news. A man was being wheeled off to a police station after robbing two banks that morning.
The would-be bank robber couldn’t understand how he’d been caught on camera. “I wore the juice!” he exclaimed.
It turns out he believed wearing lemon juice on his face would hide him from the cameras unless he was exposed to flames. After all, that’s how invisible ink worked, right?
Intrigued by this strange phenomenon, these two scientists set about exploring why people can be so confident about something they know nothing about.
They performed a series of investigations and compared how people subjectively thought they had done to how they had actually done. Those who scored in the lowest percentiles on grammar, humour, and logic tests tended to greatly overestimate their competence. Their actual test scores placed them in the 12th percentile, but they thought their performance was in the 62nd percentile.
It turns out being incompetent at something makes us overestimate our skills and fail to recognise our mistakes. We lack the self-awareness to step back and look at ourselves objectively. After reading an hour about quantum physics, for example, we put on an erudite air and believe we know it all. We also tend to be unable to recognise the competence of others.
All this makes us think we are better, more educated, and more capable than the competition.
But the Dunning-Kruger effect is not synonymous with a low IQ, and all of us can fall victim to it.
How It Usually Goes
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
We start learning something new, like personal finance. After listening to a few podcast episodes, we think we know it all. Stocks are the best. Index funds suck. Warren Buffet, who? We’re at the peak of Mount Stupid. The world is our oyster.
As we progress further into the study of money, those stocks start looking like bad investments. A few weeks later, COVID happens. Our stocks plummet. The end seems nigh. We alight in the valley of despair.
But we keep reading, learning. We invest sensibly in index funds and play the long game. We dabble in stocks, but with more knowledge under our belts, we make our choices carefully. Things are starting to look cautiously optimistic as we progress up the slope of enlightenment. Our confidence, shattered in the fall from Mt. Stupid, is starting to creep back.
After years spent reading, writing, and teaching about the subject, we’re back to almost being as confident as we were on that fateful peak. But we’re never going back to that cocky idiot who started this journey. Our thoughts about money have transitioned from a gamble-it-all-away mentality to a more considered, learned approach.
Three Ways To Overcome The Dunning-Kruger Effect
1. Question what you know
Are we confident because we know our subject extensively or are we peaking Mt. Stupid? Are we studying differing opinions with an open mind or only paying attention to the things we believe in?
Tailored algorithms on social media serve to feed this confirmation bias, so we’re only exposed to views we agree with. We lose sight of the bigger picture. We start believing our perspective is enough for us to devise a true picture of reality.
On reading about this effect, I started noting down topics I thought I knew well. I then started teaching them to my students. I soon discovered I hadn’t known these topics as well as I thought I did. As Richard Feynman noted, explaining something in simple language often exposes flaws in your understanding.
Now when I think I’m competent on a subject, I pause to question myself. I don’t want to fall prey to my own bullshit.
2. Keep learning
The more competent we get in the subject at hand, the more we’ll progress on the Y-axis of the Dunning-Kruger graph.
I’d always single-mindedly followed my passion for being a doctor. I realised I knew nothing of the world outside my profession, and I had a decidedly skewed perception of how things worked. My confidence levels plummeted, and imposter syndrome became my constant companion.
I now use that imposter syndrome as a place marker. It tells me where I am on the confidence-competence curve. I also try and learn at least one new thing every day.
3. Ask for feedback
Being objective about ourselves is difficult, if not impossible. By asking other people for (especially anonymous) feedback, we can learn about problem areas we need to focus on.
Here’s how I used this. I suffered from severe fatigue after getting COVID last year and used to go quiet when more tired. People at my new placement would sometimes misconstrue my silence for unfriendliness. I started consciously smiling more and telling people when I was tired instead of clamming up. This immediately helped me bond better with my new team and made it a much more pleasant experience for us all.
The next time you fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, remember to keep questioning your knowledge, keep learning, and keep asking for objective feedback.
