7 Biases That Everyone Has (And How They F*ck Up Your Life)
8. The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Too Stupid To Know You're Stupid
Named after named after
David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, the Dunning-Kruger
effect occurs when unqualified or unskilled individuals hold an illusion of
being far more knowledgeable or skilled in an area than they actually are. I
refer to it as being too stupid to know you're stupid.
The explanation for this was reported by Dunning and Kruger in their 1999 article, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments":
"…people who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. We attribute this lack of awareness to a deficit in metacognitive skill. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s."