The Dunning-Kruger Effect

“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’ll be a mile from them, and you’ll have their shoes.”

Jack Handey

Ever tune in to a show like American Idol and watch people who really believed they could sing wind up in tears as they’re sent home? Turns out there’s a name for this phenomenon: The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

No, not the guy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, or the guy from the wagon train going west. (That was Donner). And you really haven’t lived until you’ve pulled a ‘Donner Party of Eight’ at the local Olive Garden.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is about people with measurable deficits in their expertise and their lack of ability to recognize these deficits within themselves. Less intelligent people become more confident. Dunning and Kruger were inspired to study the phenomenon by reports of a criminal who robbed banks after covering his face with lemon juice. Since lemon juice is often used as invisible ink, the robber thought his face wouldn’t show up on camera. An extreme example, but there are people like that out there among us. Mostly on Twitter.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect has four tenets: 1) People tend to overestimate their skill level. 2) Incompetent people fail to recognize skill in others. 3) Incompetent people vastly underestimate how extreme their own inadequacy is. 4) There is hope. You can train people to recognize their own lack of skill. You can gain perspective over time as you acknowledge what you don’t know. Improving self-awareness is half the battle.