Why incompetent people think they're amazing - David Dunning — Transcript

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1. 0:07Are you as good at things as you think you are?
2. 0:10How good are you at managing money?
3. 0:13What about reading people's emotions?
4. 0:16How healthy are you compared to other people you know?
5. 0:20Are you better than average at grammar?
6. 0:23Knowing how competent we are
7. 0:24and how are skill stack up against other people's
8. 0:27is more than a self-esteem boost.
9. 0:30It helps us figure out when we can forge ahead on our own decisions and instincts
10. 0:34and when we need, instead, to seek out advice.
11. 0:39But psychological research suggests that we're not very good
12. 0:42at evaluating ourselves accurately.
13. 0:45In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities.
14. 0:50Researchers have a name for this phenomena,
15. 0:52the Dunning-Kruger effect.
16. 0:55This effect explains why more than 100 studies
17. 0:58have shown that people display illusory superiority.
18. 1:02We judge ourselves as better than others
19. 1:04to a degree that violates the laws of math.
20. 1:08When software engineers at two companies were asked to rate their performance,
21. 1:1232% of the engineers at one company and 42% at the other
22. 1:17put themselves in the top 5%.
23. 1:21In another study, 88% of American drivers
24. 1:25described themselves as having above average driving skills.
25. 1:29These aren't isolated findings.
26. 1:31On average, people tend to rate themselves better than most
27. 1:34in disciplines ranging from health, leadership skills, ethics, and beyond.
28. 1:42What's particularly interesting is that those with the least ability
29. 1:45are often the most likely to overrate their skills to the greatest extent.
30. 1:50People measurably poor at logical reasoning,
31. 1:53grammar,
32. 1:54financial knowledge,
33. 1:55math,
34. 1:55emotional intelligence,
35. 1:57running medical lab tests,
36. 1:59and chess
37. 2:00all tend to rate their expertise almost as favorably as actual experts do.
38. 2:08So who's most vulnerable to this delusion?
39. 2:11Sadly, all of us because we all have pockets of incompetence
40. 2:15we don't recognize.
41. 2:18But why?
42. 2:19When psychologists Dunning and Kruger first described the effect in 1999,
43. 2:24they argued that people lacking knowledge and skill in particular areas
44. 2:28suffer a double curse.
45. 2:31First, they make mistakes and reach poor decisions.
46. 2:35But second, those same knowledge gaps also prevent them from catching their errors.
47. 2:40In other words, poor performers lack the very expertise needed
48. 2:44to recognize how badly they're doing.
49. 2:47For example, when the researchers studied
50. 2:49participants in a college debate tournament,
51. 2:51the bottom 25% of teams in preliminary rounds
52. 2:55lost nearly four out of every five matches.
53. 2:59But they thought they were winning almost 60%.
54. 3:03WIthout a strong grasp of the rules of debate,
55. 3:06the students simply couldn't recognize when or how often
56. 3:09their arguments broke down.
57. 3:12The Dunning-Kruger effect isn't a question of ego blinding us to our weaknesses.
58. 3:17People usually do admit their deficits once they can spot them.
59. 3:21In one study, students who had initially done badly on a logic quiz
60. 3:25and then took a mini course on logic
61. 3:28were quite willing to label their original performances as awful.
62. 3:34That may be why people with a moderate amount of experience or expertise
63. 3:38often have less confidence in their abilities.
64. 3:41They know enough to know that there's a lot they don't know.
65. 3:44Meanwhile, experts tend to be aware of just how knowledgeable they are.
66. 3:49But they often make a different mistake:
67. 3:51they assume that everyone else is knowledgeable, too.
68. 3:56The result is that people, whether they're inept or highly skilled,
69. 4:00are often caught in a bubble of inaccurate self-perception.
70. 4:04When they're unskilled, they can't see their own faults.
71. 4:07When they're exceptionally competent,
72. 4:09they don't perceive how unusual their abilities are.
73. 4:14So if the Dunning-Kruger effect is invisible to those experiencing it,
74. 4:18what can you do to find out how good you actually are at various things?
75. 4:24First, ask for feedback from other people,
76. 4:27and consider it, even if it's hard to hear.
77. 4:30Second, and more important, keep learning.
78. 4:33The more knowledgeable we become,
79. 4:34the less likely we are to have invisible holes in our competence.
80. 4:40Perhaps it all boils down to that old proverb:
81. 4:43When arguing with a fool,
82. 4:44first make sure the other person isn't doing the same thing.