The Dunning-Kruger Effect
I’m dating these references, but it’s to make a point. What’s happened in society when there are no more leading characters like Inspector Clouseau, Maxwell Smart, and my personal favorite, Lieutenant Frank Drebin? Maybe it’s that many of our elected officials appear to suffer from the same psychological phenomenon.
What IS The Dunning Kruger Effect?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited knowledge or skill in a specific area greatly overestimate their competence. Simply put, the less you know about a topic, the more likely you are to falsely believe you are an expert at it.
Coined by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, it essentially means that unskilled individuals lack the self-awareness to recognize their own mistakes. I’ll omit any more political references from this post to make the point, but admit that people do come to mind, right? This could explain why so many news headlines seem like they are from The Onion these days.
Landing the plane and cuffing the bad guys.
We don’t wish failure on people; we want Drebin, Smart, and Clouseau to solve the cases and put the bad guys behind bars. Just as we hope whoever is flying the plane knows what they’re doing (or learns quickly).
Not only is the Dunning-Kruger effect unfortunate, it’s a drag for the people who are the experts but don’t realize it. These highly skilled and knowledgeable folks often underestimate their abilities. Because true experts understand a subject's vast complexity, they mistakenly assume that tasks that are easy for them must also be easy for everyone else.
I find stepping outside the fishbowl and meeting people from different industries or areas of interest to be eye-opening. Most people don’t know the acronyms you know, or maybe they stand for something completely different, you would never know without taking breaks to meet other people.
A question to consider as you ruminate on this unfortunate phenomenon…
Do you think it’s inconceivable to support the NRA?
Maybe take a beat before answering the question.
