Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge- Charles Darwin

Have you been at a meeting or family dinner where one of the members is spouting away on a topic proclaiming they are right and everyone else is uninformed and wrong? This while it’s quite evident the person does not quite know what they are talking about, with great confidence, even as they rattle on in the unawareness of their ignorance.
The psychologists who first described this phenomenon were David Dunning and Justin Kruger who conducted a series of investigations to describe a cognitive bias called the Dunning Kruger effect. According to this-

Low performers are unable to recognize the skill and competence levels of other people, which is part of the reason why they consistently view themselves as better, more capable, and more knowledgeable than others.

Incompetent people tend to:

Overestimate their skill levels
Fail to recognize the genuine skill and expertise of others
Also Fail to recognize their own mistakes and lack of skill

Interestingly what they found was that the very knowledge and skills necessary to be good at a task, are the same qualities that a person needs to recognize that they are not good at that task. So if a person lacks those abilities, they remain not only bad at that task but also ignorant of their inability.

Top-scoring individuals on the other hand, know that they are better than the average, but they are not convinced of how superior their performance is to others. Experts can sometimes not know how well-informed they are; and the tend to believe that everyone else is also knowledgeable.

Also as people learn more about the topic of interest, they begin to recognize their lack of knowledge and ability. Then as people gain more information and become experts on a topic, their confidence levels begin to improve again. See the chart in the image below…

So what can you do to overcome this Bias ?
– keep doing the work and learning and practising to continue to build expertise in your areas of interest
– be open to Feedback – that is the only way to get a reality check! Most people prefer to stay in their ignorance and avoid/ are over sensitive to feedback preferring to remain in the bliss of unawareness. Feedback to Know what you don’t know is key so you start the journey of becoming someone who Knows what you Know…
– constantly question What you know so you remain aware, don’t slip into the blissful dungeon of not Knowing what you Don’t Know!

What do you think? Have you encountered this in your experience? How else can we navigate the Dunning Kruger effect?