Confidence In Incompetence
Have you ever heard the juicy story about the wannabee bank-robber McArthur Wheeler? If so, you will know about the Dunning–Kruger effect, and your time might wel be spent better somewhere else.
source: Wikimedia Commons
If not, stay around! The story about McArthur Wheeler is funny, tragic and educational. When mr. Wheeler learned that lemon juice is used as invisible ink, he confidently proceeded to rob two banks after smearing lemon juice all over his face; he wrongly assumed the juice would make his face invisible to the security cameras. Poor McArthur was shocked when the police found him with no trouble at all, such was the magnitude of his confidence.
This case of the lemon juice bank-robber inspired social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to do their 1999 study on the psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority, and gave it the title "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". This phenomenon is now known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. Remember that we ALL suffer from this effect, and that it's just one of the many cognitive biases our minds are so good at; it's our minds ability to bend or distort new information in a way that it fits with our existing beliefs.
It's important to recognize that the extremely incompetent are at a double disadvantage here, as they lack the competence to recognize their own incompetence. So it's not that they suffer from an inflated ego, just that they are unable to recognize when their competence fails. I do not know what mental leaps and bounds McArthur made to come to the conclusion that covering his face with lemon juice would make him unrecognizable, but we all make the same leaps, we just don't jump as far as McArthur. Or Trump; I often stand in awe of the extreme confidence with which he makes some of the most ridiculous claims, on twitter and in front of the camera. "We will build that wall. And we'll make the Mexicans pay for it" and "we will bring those jobs back to America" are some of the more memorable ones, and they display a complete ignorance about the rate of criminality among immigrants and the fact that most jobs are lost to automation respectively.
But Trump's not the issue here (this is just my own cognitive biases at work); we all are. When asked, a large majority (I forgot the exact number, but it's well over 60%) of automobilists rate themselves as an above average driver. When people are asked for their opinion on a non-existing pop-band, it's breathtaking to see the lengths people will go to fake an opinion; I guess nobody really wants to come across as ignorant about something that's supposed to be common knowledge. In the original study by Dunning and Kruger, students who ranked lowest after several debate contests generally believed they did very well indeed.
So it's not just McArthur, Trump and that one know-it-all we all have in our circle of friends, family and co-workers; we all are incompetent in many fields and our cognitive biases hide those incompetenties from ourselves while our mind bends poorly understood data to fit in with what we already (think we) know. Now, where's that lemon juice... Poor McArthur; if only he had realized there's no fooling the mechanical eyes of security cameras. My girlfriend on the other hand will be scared witless when she finds a walking suit without head, hands or feet in the house on her return home...
Why incompetent people think they're amazing - David Dunning
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