Why Do Stupid People Think They are Smart? The Dunning Kruger Effect.

          Better Than Yesterday.
                                                  One step at a time.


 One day in 1995, a man robbed two pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. he didn't wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank.
of course the police found the robber and later than night arrested him. Interestingly enogh, when the robber was handcuffed, he was puzzled and he mumbled "but i wore the juice". Apparently, this bank robber thought that smearing lemon juice on his face, would render him invisible to bank's security cameras. 
 And he didn't just think that, he was pretty confident about it. his rational was that since the chemical properties of lemon juice are used in invisible ink, it should render him invisible to the bank security cameras. This is obviously a completely dumb way of thinking. But whats intresting is that, even after the police showed him the footage of his robbery, he was genuinely surprised that it didn't work and he thought the footage was fake. The police conducted that this man was not crazy or on drugs, just incredibly misinformed and mistaken. The funny robbery led two social psychologist, Dunning and Kruger, to study this phenomenon more deeply.
                Specifically what intrested them the most was the confidence exerted by the robber, that made him belive he'd be able to obstruct the security cameras with just lemon juice. to investigate  thise in the lab they examined a group of undergraduate students in several categories: their grammatical writing, logical reasoning and a sense of humor.  After knowing the test score student to estimate his or her overall score as well as there realative rank compared to the other students. This is when Dunning and Kruger found something fasinating. They found that the student who scored the lowest in these congnitive task, always overestimated how well they did. not just by a little but a lot . They thought they scored above the average, while there score was one the lowest. So not only were that student incompetent or less skilled in those areas but they obiviously didn't even know just how bad they were at them. students who scored the highest, had more accurate perception of there abilities, but they made a different mistake. Paradoxically the highest scoring students underestimate there performance. they new they were better than average at the test, but because it was easy for them they assumed it was easy for every one. They didn't know that there ability was at the top percentile. Today this phenomenon is know as Dunning Kruger effect. Essentially the low ability people do not posses the skills needed to recognize their own incompetence or lack of knowledge . 

                                                               

There poor self awareness leads them to overestimate there capabilities. You can clearly  see from following graph :-

what i mean in this graph here. Having barely any skill or knowledge, leads to massive confidence. However when you become more knowledgeable about a certain topic that confidence falls. Only when you start to reach above average skill is when the your confidence is about a certain topics starts to pick up again. Contrary to the popular belief those is not limited. It doesn't matter what specific skill we pick, the less person knows about any given activity the more likely they are to overestimate their skill or knowledge. 
                  
                    The Dunning Kriger effect can be observed during talent shows like American idol or Indian idol. The audition are usually filled with a variety of good and bad singers. The ones who are the bad at it, almost never realise how bad they really are . That they're genuinely disappointed when they get rejected. The truth it, we're not very good at evaluating our self accurate. In fact the majority of people believe, that they are better than average.  88% of people think that they're better drivers than the majority, and even elderly people rank thyself among the best drivers. A more interesting example is that 94% of professors assume that they are better in comparison to there colleagues. We judge our self as better than others, to a degree that violates the lows of maths. But why those being less skilled makes you more confident in your abilities ? 

                       After all we are all susceptible to the Danning Kruger effect. But how can we prevent out self to falling prey to it? Well answer is we should thrive to educate our self as much as possible. Your not expected to know everything after all. Thinking your always right is a clear sign of foolishness. It seems that the more knowledge people have, the more they realise, hoe little they know about reality. In other words, the more people know about a certain issue, the more they realise how complicated, unexplored and extensive it is, and how many things they do not understand or know yet. It's a beautiful paradox in which the more we study something, the less we know about it. On the other hand, people who dabble on the surface of anything they pursue, will never know how much they still have to learn. In the Dunning -Kurger experiment , unskilled or incompetent students improved their ability to correctly estimate the test results after receiving minimal tutoring on skill they lacked. 
             
                    It's helpful to have someone who is ahead of you show you what you have yet to learn. so, next time feel confident that you know a lot about something, take a closer look at the topic as it could be that you are a victim of Dunning-Kurger effect.  You just might not know what you don't know. 

Don't forget to comment, subscribe this blog as we come up with such a interesting topics frequently.

Thank you, for reading.

keep smiling and 

keep learning.