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Why Do Stupid People Think They're Smart? The Dunning Kruger Effect (animated) - YouTube
Channel: Better Than Yesterday
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One day in 1995, a man robbed two Pittsburgh
banks in broad daylight.
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He didn鈥檛 wear a mask or any sort of disguise.
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And he smiled at surveillance cameras before
walking out of each bank.
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Of course the police found the robber and
later than night arrested him. Interestingly
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enough, when the robber was handcuffed, he
was puzzled and he mumbled "but I wore the
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juice". Apparently, this bank robber thought
that smearing lemon juice on his face, would
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render him invisible to bank's security cameras.
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And he didn't just think that, he was pretty
confident about it. His rationale was that
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since the chemical properties of lemon juice
are used in invisible ink, it should render
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him invisible to the bank security cameras. This
is obviously a completely dumb way of thinking. But
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what's interesting is that, even after the
police showed him the footage of his robbery,
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he was genuinely surprised that it didn't
work and he thought the footage was fake. The
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police concluded that this man was not crazy
or on drugs, just incredibly misinformed and
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mistaken. The funny robbery led two social
psychologists, Dunning and Kruger, to study
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this phenomenon more deeply.
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Specifically what interested them the most,
was the confidence exerted by this robber,
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that made him believe he鈥檇 be able to obstruct
the security cameras with just lemon juice. To
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investigate this in the lab, they examined
a group of undergraduate students in several
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categories: their grammatical writing, logical
reasoning and a sense of humor.
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After knowing the test scores, they asked
each student to estimate his or her overall
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score, as well as their relative rank compared
to other students. This is when Dunning and
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Kruger found something fascinating. They found
that the students who scored the lowest in
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these cognitive tasks, always overestimated
how well they did.
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And not just by a little, but by a lot.
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They thought they had scored above average,
while their score was one the lowest. So not
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only were those students incompetent or less
skilled in those areas, but they obviously
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didn't even know just how bad they were at
them. Students who scored the highest, had
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more accurate perceptions of their abilities,
but they made a different mistake.
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Paradoxically the highest scoring students
underestimated their performance.
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They knew they were better than average at
the test, but because it was easy for them,
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they assumed it was easy for everyone.
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They didn't know that their ability was at
the top percentile. Today this phenomenon is
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known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Essentially,
low ability people do not possess the skills
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needed to recognize their own incompetence
or lack of knowledge.
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Their poor self-awareness leads them to overestimate
their own capabilities. You can clearly see
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what I mean in this graph here.Having barely
any skill or knowledge, leads to massive confidence.
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However when you become more knowledgeable
about a certain topic, that confidence falls.
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Only when you start to reach above average
skill, is when the your confidence about a
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certain topic starts to pick up again. Contrary
to popular belief, this is not just limited
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to cognitive tasks.
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It doesn't seem to matter what specific skill
we pick, the less a person knows about any
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given activity, the more likely they are to
overestimate their skill or knowledge. The
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Dunning-Kruger effect can be observed during
talent shows like American Idol.
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The auditions are usually filled with a variety
of good and bad singers.
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The ones who are bad at it, almost never realize
how bad they really are.
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That's why they're genuinely disappointed
when they get rejected. The truth it, we're
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not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately.
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In fact, the majority of people believe, that
they are better than average.
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88% of people think that they're better drivers
than the majority, and even elderly people
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rank themselves among the best drivers. A more
interesting example is that 94% of professors
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assume that they are better in comparison
to their colleagues. We judge ourselves as
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better than others, to a degree that violates
the laws of math.
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But why?
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Why does being less skilled make you more
confident in your abilities?I'm going to help
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you visualize how this happens.
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This is Mike.
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He's an amateur photographer.
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And this box represents how much he knows
about photography. And this is how big he thinks
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the field is and how much there is to know
about it.
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With this reasoning, he's easily at the top
percentile of all photographers.
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But let's say he meets a professional photographer,
someone who has been doing it for 7 years,
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but he still has a lot to learn.
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This photographer knows this much about photography.
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But he also knows that the field is much larger,
and there's this much to know about it. Because
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this photographer is more knowledgeable about
the subject he knows that this gray area exists.
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However, Mike does not.Now you can see why
Mike is so confident in his ability.
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He has no idea, just how much he doesn't know.
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Because he only has a little knowledge of
the field, he doesn't know that it's way more
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extensive than that.
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And because he doesn't know, what he doesn't
know, he thinks he knows 90% about photography. Meanwhile,
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experts tend to be aware of just how knowledgeable
they are.
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But they often make a different mistake: they
assume that everyone else is knowledgeable
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as well, mostly because others exert so much
confidence. In this instance, the photographer
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is aware he only knows about 70%.
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But if he met someone like Mike, he would
underestimate himself. 90% is better than 70%
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after all.We are all susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger
effect.
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But how can we prevent ourselves from falling
prey to it?
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Well the answer is, you should strive to educate
yourself as much as possible.
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You're not expected to know everything after
all. Thinking you're always right is a clear
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sign of foolishness.It seems that the more
knowledge people have, the more they realize
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how little they know in reality.
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In other words, the more people know about
a certain issue, the more they realize how
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complicated, unexplored and extensive it is,
and how many things they do not understand
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or know yet.
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It鈥檚 a beautiful paradox in which the more
we study something, the less we know about it.
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On the other hand, people who dabble on the
surface of anything they pursue, will never
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know how much they still have to learn.
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In the Dunning-Kruger experiment, unskilled
or incompetent students improved their ability
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to correctly estimate the test results after
receiving minimal tutoring on the skills they lacked.
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It鈥檚 helpful to have someone who is ahead
of you show you what you have yet to learn. So
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next time you feel confident that you know
a lot about something, take a closer look
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at the topic as it could be that you are a
victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
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You just might not know what you don't know.
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Thanks for watching.
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