The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, encapsulated in phrases like “Other people’s work always seems easy” or “The more I know, the less I know” (or as Socrates put it, “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing”), highlights a peculiar aspect of our perception, scientifically termed the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

This cognitive bias was described in 1999 by American social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a distorted perception of one’s own abilities and knowledge in a particular field. People with a low level of knowledge and/or skills in a subject tend to overestimate them, while those with substantial knowledge, skills, and abilities tend to undervalue them.

Of course, the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon was known long before these two scientists. The fact that phrases reflecting this paradox can be found in ancient works and teachings, including not only Socrates but also, for example, Confucius, serves as confirmation. However, Dunning and Kruger conducted several sociological studies, presented conclusions, and described the effect from a scientific standpoint.

On one hand, the Dunning-Kruger paradox can be explained by the fact that if you don’t know much about a topic, you conceptualize it in broad strokes and assess your knowledge in those same general terms. However, as you delve deeper into a subject, you uncover more details, realizing how little you actually know. A simplified example: making a campfire. Putting in the wood and lighting a match might seem enough. But when you try it yourself, you learn that you need to arrange newspapers, thin and thick branches in a specific order, and ignite the fire in a certain way.

Dunning and Kruger also noted that people who lack knowledge in a particular area cannot recognize their own incompetence due to their low level of knowledge. Consequently, they cannot provide professional evaluations of their judgments, hindering the comparison of their competency level with that of professionals.

On the other hand, if you are a professional and can effortlessly solve various tasks in your field, you may not understand why someone else finds them challenging—it’s easy for you. One reason professionals tend to downplay their knowledge and skills is that they don’t see them as anything special. Often, this becomes a driving force for self-improvement, further education, knowledge expansion, making a competent person even more competent. This is a very positive consequence of the Dunning-Kruger paradox.

In addition to the inclination of competent individuals toward improvement, the most critical practical conclusions from Dunning and Kruger’s studies concern incompetent people. Individuals with a low level of knowledge about a subject:

• Cannot assess their own level of ignorance/incompetence and invariably overestimate it.
• Cannot assess the level of knowledge/ignorance, competence/incompetence of others.
• Cannot understand their mistakes and evaluate the overall work result.