What is the Dunning-Kruger effect and why does it happen?

Surprisingly, we humans are not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately. One of the explanations for this psychological deficiency is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Essentially, people with limited knowledge or competence greatly overestimate their capabilities in a given intellectual or social situation. 

When we don’t know much about a certain subject, we believe we are smarter and more capable than we are. 

The effect was first described in 1999 by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, after whom it was named. They found that the people scoring lowest on grammar, humor, and logic tests, placing in the bottom 12%, drastically overestimated their performance, believing they placed in the top 38%. The combination of poor self-awareness and low cognitive ability lead low performers unable to recognize the competence levels of other people and therefore viewed themselves in a better light. Essentially, the less they knew, the more they thought they knew.

Accordingly, being bad at something creates two problems. First, you don’t do well in a given task because you don’t have the skills. And secondly, because you are so bad at it, you can’t see your own mistakes and learn from them. 

However, it is not only being bad at something that causes the Dunning-Kruger effect. Studies have also linked difficulties in metacognition to the effect, specifically the ability to step back and estimate your own behavior and abilities. We often view ourselves from a limited and highly subjective perspective, where we assume that we are more skilled, knowledgeable, and superior to others. This would be great, but usually isn’t realistic, is it?

Additionally, due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a person might have the slightest bit of awareness about something, yet believe that they are an expert in the subject. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, mistakenly leading people to believe they know a lot more than they do.

How does Dunning-Kruger affect our learning?

As an impactful cognitive bias, Dunning-Kruger can affect our learning in many ways. Most importantly, being blind to your incompetence makes it impossible to learn from your mistakes as you don’t even see them. It also becomes challenging to recognize areas where you need to improve and learn more. 

However, the Dunning-Kruger effect does not only impact the lowest performers. Those who excel in something may think that a task is simple for everyone and additionally underestimate their relative capabilities. Talented or skilled performers might neglect their specialties and talents and not pursue them further. Inexperienced teachers can easily fall into this trap and assume that understanding a new concept is as simple for the students as it is for the teacher themselves. 

So, we all have to be careful: no one is safe from the Dunning-Kruger effect. Regardless of how informed or skilled you are, everyone has areas in which they are incompetent and therefore prone to the effect. 

Stay tuned for part 2, where we will be sharing advice on how to minimize Dunning-Kruger’s effect in your learning.