The Dunning-Kruger effect can be expressed as follows: „If you are not an expert on a particular topic, you lack the very expertise you need to know how much expertise you lack.“ Corey S. Powell interviews David Dunning and discusses how the underlying ideas have evolved since the original paper was published in 2000 („David Dunning: Overcoming Overconfidence“) open mindApril 5, 2024).
For those who have only seen the „Dunning-Kruger effect“ deployed as an insult, a brief review of the original paper from 25 years ago may be helpful. “Immature and unaware of it: How difficulty recognizing one's own incompetence leads to inflated self-esteem.” December 1999 issue Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (77:6, 1121-34). The paper begins with a nice opening anecdote:
In 1995, MacArthur Wheeler broke into two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight and robbed them without any visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after a videotape of him from a surveillance camera was broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. Later, when police showed him the surveillance tape, Wheeler stared in disbelief. „But I drank the juice,“ he muttered. Apparently Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing lemon juice on his face would make him invisible to the videotape camera (Fuocco, 1996). …
When people are incompetent in their strategies, we
In order to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer from a double burden. They not only reach incorrect conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but also deprive themselves of the ability to realize it due to their incompetence. Rather, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the false impression that they are doing well. …(A) Charles Darwin (1871) he wisely pointed out more than a century ago that “ignorance produces more confidence than knowledge” (p. 3).
The actual study included a survey of dozens of Cornell University undergraduate students. From the summary:
People tend to have overly favorable views of their own abilities in many social and intellectual areas. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are new to these areas suffer from a double burden. So not only do these people reach incorrect conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence deprives them of the metacognitive ability to make them happen. Across four studies, the authors found that participants who scored in the bottom quartile on humor, grammar, and logic tests significantly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although his test scores placed him in the 12th percentile, they estimated himself to be in the 62nd percentile. In some analyses, this miscalibration is associated with a lack of metacognitive skills, the ability to distinguish between accuracy and error. Paradoxically, as participants' skills improved and their metacognitive abilities improved, they were able to recognize the limits of their abilities.
An obvious question arises. Do these tests and the results from college undergraduates generalize to other settings and populations? This is where Powell's interview with Dunning comes in. Dunning explains his key insights as follows:
The Dunning-Kruger results are actually a bit complicated, as there are a large number of results. It is this idea that has become a meme. Non-experts do not have the very expertise needed to know how much expertise they lack on a particular topic. The Dunning-Kruger effect hits all of us sooner or later in pockets of incompetence.They are invisible to us, because you know please do not I know something, I need to know something. It's not about general stupidity. It concerns each of us sooner or later.
You can be incredibly smart in one area and have no expertise in another. We all know very smart people who don't recognize flaws in their sense of humor or social skills, or people who know a lot about art but not much about medicine. We each have different expertise, and we each have different areas where we shouldn't step into thinking we know as much as the experts. My philosopher friends and I call it „epistemological trespass.“ This is because you are invading the domain of experts. We’ve seen this a lot during the pandemic. …I think it was Vernon Law, the baseball pitcher, who said that life is the cruelest teacher because it gives you a test before it gives you a lesson.
Is the Dunning-Kruger effect just a statistical artifact?
This criticism is that the Dunning-Kruger effect is a statistical artifact known as regression to the mean. People who do poorly on tests are simply overestimating themselves. It's a measurement error and an artifact because high performers can only underestimate themselves. This issue is discussed in the original article. We conducted his series of nine studies investigating regression to the mean. Others have conducted research that calls this artifact into question. Criticisms tend to focus on his two studies, the first of his four research papers in 1999. I can't ignore the cynicism of those who don't take into account his 25 years of research that has happened since then.
Dunning discusses social norms such as „don't insult others,“ and argues that, at least primarily, „if someone says something, we've been taught to assume it's the truth. ” states. These rules work pretty well for interpersonal interactions, but they don't work for social media.
I think the interesting thing about the internet and social media is that it takes us out of the environment where we learned all the rules of civility. You and I are having a conversation here. we are in a relationship. Twitter isn't like that. On Twitter, I post and declare something, and then a few hours later you show up and declare it. We're not talking, we're declaring asynchronously. Neither the rules of kindness nor the rules of civility are working.
An anthropologist friend of mine reminds me that every time a new communication technology, such as the telegraph or telephone, comes along, a breakdown in social norms occurs. Whatever rules of civility have been developed, they have not yet been applied to new platforms. We are in the middle of it now. I think what's happening with social media is that the rules of civility aren't as established as they are in face-to-face interactions.