Idiots Who Think

They’re Experts
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
“The whole
problem with the
world is that fools
and fanatics are
always so certain
of themselves, and
wiser people so
full of doubts.”
- Bertrand Russell
“I’m, like, a really
smart person.”
- Donald J. Trump
 Who Were Dunning and Kruger?
• Although the phenomenon of overconfidence has been
observed throughout history and widely recognized, it
was not until 1999 that we received experimental
validation for this effect
• Two psychologists named David Dunning and Justin
Kruger set up an experiment at Cornell University to
measure the correlation between real and self-assessed
performance on a mock test
• Dunning and Kruger were apparently inspired by the case
of McArthur Wheeler, a bank robber who used lemon
juice to hide his face from the security cameras https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsGQ00Vlxn4
 What did They Propose?
• Dunning and Kruger hypothesized that for a given skill,
incompetent people will:
• fail to recognize their own lack of skill
• fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
• fail to recognize genuine skill in others
• recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill, after they are
exposed to training for that skill
• “If you're incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent
(because) the skills you need to produce a right answer are
exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”
• They used the the condition of anosognosia as an analogy to
explain this phenomenon
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsTdHhttyg
 What was the Study? What Did
They Find?
• Dunning and Kruger tested their hypotheses on a group
of Undergraduate students at Cornell
• These students were assessed on their logical reasoning
skills, grammatical skills and understanding of humor
• After taking the test, students were shown their scores
and asked to estimate their own rank
• While those who performed well on the test assessed
their own rank accurately (in some cases underestimating
their performance relative to others), those who
performed poorly tended to overestimate their own rank
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y7RIAgOpn0
What Have We Learned Since?
• A number of studies have been conducted since their paper was
originally published but the results largely confirm the
conclusions of Dunning and Kruger
• It was found in one follow-up paper that grossly incompetent
students were able to improve their ability to self-assess their
rank after some minimal tutoring in the subject they were
tested on
• In addition, there may be cultural forces at play since studies in
East Asia show a tendency for people to underestimate their
rank (underachievement is seen as an opportunity to improve
upon oneself and to promote social harmony)
What is the meaning of the word ‘humility’?
Do you think this is a valuable trait for people to possess?