We all like to think we are good at certain things—above average in certain areas. Most
of us are at some things. But the truth is, you are likely wrong about how good or bad you are at
many things. It is likely that you both over and underestimate your actual abilities in numerous
areas of life. And the areas and the degree to which you’re wrong would probably surprise you.
In a 1999 study, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered a phenomenon that
would be coined the Dunning-Kruger effect. After giving participants various tests that assessed
their abilities in humor, logical reasoning, and grammar, the participants were then asked
to self-assess their performance in relation to their peers in the study. Dunning and Kruger
found that people who performed poorly on the tests tended to believe that they did far better
than they actually did, while those who performed well tended to misperceive their performance in
relation to the average of their peers. In other words, the study would discover the cognitive
bias where people who are less knowledgeable or experienced in an area tend to believe that they
are much more competent in that area than they actually are, and those who are experienced and
knowledgeable in an area tend to underestimate or doubt their abilities. These cognitive biases
are the Dunning-Kruger effect. Although the phenomenon is debated amongst researchers and, on
the surface, the effect may seem paradoxical and bizarre, arguably, the cause is understandable.
If someone knows little about a subject or has little experience in a particular area,
they do not have enough experience or knowledge to recognize the degree of their incompetence.
In other words, they don’t know enough to know what they do not know. “[I]f you're incompetent,
you can't know you're incompetent... the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly
the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is,” said Dunning. On the flip side,
people with more knowledge and experience in an area are aware of the complexity, vastness,
and difficulty involved in being right or successful, and thus, they are likely to
be more doubtful of their abilities. They also tend to think that others are more capable in
the area than what is actually the case, and so, they are also more likely to underestimate
themselves when ranked against others. Examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect
demonstrated in studies include things like driving, where studies have shown that 93% of
American drivers believe they are better than average. The phenomenon is also often present
in the workplace, where employees of companies tend to overestimate their performance compared
to their coworkers where as many as more than 40% of a company’s employees believe that they are
in the top 5% of performers. Of course, everyone can’t be better than most. There must be a most.
Throughout the processes of learning, strategizing, evaluating, and reflecting,
there is another process at play referred to as metacognition. Metacognition is the awareness of
one’s own thought processes. It’s one’s thoughts about thinking. A major part of the learning
process and a major factor in being competent in something is the ability, through metacognition,
to recognize patterns, errors, and problems in one’s thinking and then employ strategies to
deal with and overcome them. According to Dunning and Kruger, when one is incompetent in an area,
they lack metacognitive abilities in that area. As a result, this lack of awareness of
their thought processes and knowledge prevents them from recognizing where and when they may
go wrong, and so, in their mind, they never do. This phenomenon can be fairly unsettling on the
individual scale—to know that you don’t know what you don’t know. Of course, you already knew that,
but the degree to which you’re unaware and the areas that you might have such oversights,
where you might otherwise feel pretty confident, can be disconcerting. But it’s even more
unsettling when considered on the collective, societal scale. “What’s curious is that,
in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead,
the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something
that feels to them like knowledge,” said Dunning. Partly as a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect,
people who are not qualified to speak on certain subjects are still some of the most confident
and loudest who do. More qualified individuals, rather, tend to be less loud and less simplistic
and, instead, more thoughtful and cautious. And for exceptionally high-level experts,
since they tend to misperceive how big of a gap there is between them and the average person,
it can be reasonably assumed that they are likely to insufficiently communicate
about the subject they are an expert in with a general audience. And of course, in some cases,
complex things simply cannot be fully explained quickly or in comprehensive terms to individuals
who are not experts themselves. And so, out of the lot here—the incompetent but confident amateur,
the competent but cautious intermediate, or the exceptionally competent expert who is confident
but struggles to understand and communicate with the laymen—who is more convincing to a
mass audience of individuals who do not know the difference between correct and false information?
It’s seemingly become more and more common to have an opinion about nearly everything. Maybe
it’s always been this way. Maybe having access to all the world’s information but only enough
time to read the headlines and the incentive to still leave a comment has exacerbated this human
tendency. Whatever the case, because of this and in combination with the Dunning-Kruger effect,
some of the voices we hear the most of are the least qualified, useful, or accurate. They are,
rather, voices of confidence and charisma, not nuance and care. The right voices,
rather, are often quitter, harder to parse, or still looking for the right
words and means to express themselves. It’s natural to want to have a voice that
is heard. It's desirable to be perceived, liked, followed, impactful. Being a voice
of change and impact is a noble goal. But sometimes the greatest impact is silence.
Does the world really need more voices? Or does the world need more careful voices?
Of course, the irony here—being a voice that is not silent—is not lost. But the point here
is not merely about being silent outright. It is about being carefully noisy—at least
attempting to be. It’s impossible to have no opinions. But it is possible to have less or
be more careful around how we hold the ones we do. Once you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect, it
might feel like now you are no longer susceptible to it. Or perhaps, you might feel as though it’s
something you never were susceptible to. You’re not the kind of person who overestimates their
abilities. Your cautious and thoughtful and self-ware. You never make claims about things
you don’t know. You know your blind spots. But, of course, that’s not how blind spots work. In truth,
do you think anyone who is subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect, overestimating their
abilities or knowledge, thinks they are? The phenomenon is precisely that one does not know
that they are a victim to it. “The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is that you don’t
know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club,” said Dunning. In fact, thinking you’re impervious
to the Dunning-Kruger effect is itself an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You know just enough
about the phenomenon to believe you can circumvent it, while not knowing enough to know you probably
can’t—at least not automatically or universally. Perhaps, however, we can overcome it more often
with a certain kind of awareness and attitude. By more regularly being silent, by being
willing to be a nobody, to let our voice, our presence, our existence not always be involved,
we can perhaps be a victim of the effect less and be on the right side of the effect more. In truth,
the average person is well-read and experienced in a relatively small quantity of things (at
best). We don’t need to be in more than that. We shouldn’t try or pretend to be. After a certain
point, the quantity of opinions one holds is almost always inversely proportional to the
quality and accuracy of them. We will inevitably often fail at correctly making the distinction for
ourselves and knowing which areas we belong in and which of our opinions deserve sharing. But that’s
okay. The goal here is simply to try our best. Ultimately, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a
continual sliding scale that follows us through life. As long as we take on new endeavors, new
challenges, new goals, we will be incompetent in certain areas. And as long as we are incompetent,
we will be partially ignorant to the true degree of our incompetence. But as long as we continue
to learn and grow, we will also uncover new knowledge, and we will continue to realign our
self-perception with our actual abilities. Life is a continuous cycle of realizing how little you
knew, how much you were wrong, and how complex things really are. And then, realizing it again.