You’d Be Surprised How Smart (Or Dumb) You Are | The Dunning-Kruger Effect

this video is sponsored by blinkist we all like to think we are good at certain things above average in certain areas most of us are at some things but the truth is you are likely wrong about how good or bad you are at many things it is likely that you both over and underestimate your actual abilities in numerous areas of life and the areas and the degree to which you're wrong would probably surprise you in a 1999 study psychologists David Dunning and Justin Krueger discovered a phenomenon that would be coined the Dunning Krueger effect after

giving participants of the study various tests that assess their abilities in humor logical reasoning and grammar the participants were then asked to self assess their performance in relation to their peers in the study Dunning and Krueger found that people who perform poorly on the tests tended to believe that they did far better than they actually did while those who performed well tended to misperceive their performance in relation to the average of their peers in other words the study would discover the cognitive bias where people who are less knowledgeable or experienced in an area tend to

believe that they are much more competent in that area than they actually are and those who are experienced and knowledgeable in an area tend to underestimate or doubt their abilities these cognitive biases are the Dunning Krueger effect although the phenomenon is debated amongst researchers and on the surface the effect may seem paradoxical and bizarre arguably the cause is understandable if someone know knows little about a subject or has little experience in a particular area they do not have enough experience or knowledge to recognize the degree of their incompetence in other words they don't know enough

to know what they do not know if you're incompetent you can't know you're incompetent the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is said Dunning on the flip side people with more knowledge and experience in an area are aware of the complexity vastness and difficulty involved in being right or successful and thus they are likely to be more doubtful of their abilities they also tend to think that others are more capable in the area than what is actually the case and so they

are also more likely to underestimate themselves when ranked against others examples of the dun and Krueger effect demonstrated in studies include things like driving where Studies have shown that 93% of American drivers believe they are better than average the phenomenon is also often present in the workplace where employees of companies tend to overestimate their performance compared to their co-workers were as many as more than 40% of a company's employees believe that they are in the top 5% of performers of course everyone can't be better than most there must be a most throughout the processes of

learning strategizing evaluating and reflecting there is another process at play referred to as metacognition metacognition is the awareness of One's Own thought processes it's one's thoughts about thinking a major part of the learning process and a major factor in being competent in something is the ability through metacognition to recognize patterns errors and problems in one's thinking and then employ strategies to deal with and overcome them according to Dunning and Krueger when someone is incompetent in an area they lack metacognitive abilities in that area as a result this lack of awareness of their thought processes and

knowledge prevents them from recognizing where and when they may go wrong and so in their mind they never do phenomenon can be fairly unsettling on the individual scale to know that you don't know what you don't know of course you already knew that but the degree to which you're unaware and the areas that you might have such oversights where you might otherwise feel pretty confident can be disconcerting but it's even more unsettling when considered on the collective societal scale what's Curious is that in many cases incompetence does not leave people disoriented perplexed or cautious instead

the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence idence booed by something that feels to them like knowledge said Dunning partly as a result of the Dunning Krueger effect people who are not qualified to speak on certain subjects are still some of the most confident and loudest who do more qualified individuals rather tend to be less loud and less simplistic and instead more thoughtful and cautious and for exceptionally high level experts since they tend to misperceive how big of a gap there is between them and the average person it can be reasonably assumed that they

are likely to insufficiently communicate about the subject they are an expert in with the general audience and of course in some cases complex things simply cannot be fully explained quickly or in comprehensive terms to individuals who are not experts themselves and so out of the lot here the incompetent but confident amature the competent but cautious intermediate or the exceptionally competent expert who is confident but struggles to understand and communicate with the Layon who is more convincing to a mass audience of individuals who do not know the difference between correct and false information it seemingly become

more and more common to have an opinion about nearly everything maybe it's always been this way maybe having access to all the world's information but only enough time to read the headlines and the incentive to still leave a comment has exacerbated this human tendency whatever the case because of this and in combination with the dun and Krueger effect some of the voices we hear the most of are the least qualified useful or accurate they are rather voices of conf idence and Charisma not nuance and Care the right voices rather are often quieter harder to parse

or still looking for the right words and means to express themselves it's natural to want to have a voice that is heard it's desirable to be perceived liked followed impactful being a voice of change and impact is a noble goal but sometimes the greatest impact is silence does the world really need more voices or does the world need more careful voices of course the irony here being a voice that is not silent is not lost but the point here is not merely about being silent outright it is about being carefully noisy at least attempting to

be it's impossible to have no opinions but it is possible to have less or be more careful around how we hold the ones we do once you know about the dun and Krueger effect it might feel like now you are no longer susceptible to it or perhaps you might feel as though it's something you never were susceptible to too you're not the kind of person who overestimates their abilities you're cautious and thoughtful and self-aware you never make claims about things you don't know you know your blind spots but of course that's not how blind spots

work in truth do you think anyone who is subject to the dun and crueger effect overestimating their abilities or knowledge thinks they are the phenomenon is precisely that one does not know that they are a victim to it the first rule of the dun and Krueger club is that you don't know you're a member of the dun and Krueger club said Dunning in fact thinking you're impervious to the Dunning Krueger effect is itself an example of the Dunning Krueger effect you know just enough about the phenomenon to believe you can circumvent it while not knowing

enough to know you probably can't at least not automatically or universally perhaps however we can overcome it more often with a certain kind of awareness and attitude by more regularly being silent by being willing to be a nobody to let our voice our presence our exist distance not always be involved we can perhaps be a victim of the effect less and be on the right side of the effect more in truth the average person is well read and experienced in a relatively small quantity of things at best we don't need to be in more than

that we shouldn't try or pretend to be after a certain point the quantity of opinions one holds is almost always inversely proportional to the quality and accuracy of them we will inevitably often fail at correctly making the distinction for ourselves and knowing which areas we belong in and which of our opinions deserve sharing but that's okay the goal here is simply to try our best ultimately the Dunning Krueger effect is a continual sliding scale that follows us through life as long as we take on new Endeavors new challenges new goals we will be incompetent in

certain areas and as long as we are incompetent we'll be partially ignorant to the true degree of our incompetence but as long as we continue to learn and grow we will also uncover new knowledge and we will will continue to realign our self-perception with our actual abilities life is a continuous cycle of realizing how little you knew how much you were wrong and how complex things really are and then realizing it [Music] again this video was sponsored by blinkist our awareness of ourself is limited distorted and often confusing our biases and oversights have tangible impact

on our lives lives they disconnect us from reality and paint our decisions in colors we are partly blind to the books Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel conoman you're about to make a terrible mistake by Olivier saboni and know thyself by Steven Fleming all provide highly unique and Powerful insights into the nature of how we think how we can often misunderstand our thoughts and feelings how we can become misaligned from truth and how we can gain back better control of our thought processes and make better decisions using the app blinkist you can learn from all

of these books as well as over 6,600 other non-fiction books and podcasts in just 15 minutes each of course the more we learn the more powerful and fine-tuned our radar becomes for understanding the nuances of things whether it's in ourselves the world or the intersection of the two where our decisions and evaluations change everything with it being the beginning of the new year blinkist is the perfect way to broaden your perspective and experience those essential aha moments more often and with blinket spaces you can easily organize and share titles with those close to you making

it even easier to build knowledge through a network of people interested in the same things as you whether it's a topic or a group of people you can create a space around it and share the books and ideas you discover get 25% off blinket annual premium membership and a 7-Day free trial by using the link in the description and of course as always thank you so much for watching in general and see you next [Music] video [Music]