{"id":5655,"date":"2020-05-20T08:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=5655"},"modified":"2020-05-20T17:55:12","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T22:55:12","slug":"unbearable-irony-when-dunning-kruger-bites-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/unbearable-irony-when-dunning-kruger-bites-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbearable Irony: When Dunning-Kruger Bites Back…"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than most psychology findings, the Dunning-Kruger effect gets a laugh every time.<\/p>\n

Here goes:<\/p>\n

Imagine that I give 100 people a grammar test. If my test is well-designed, it gives me insight into their actual knowledge<\/strong> of grammar.<\/p>\n

I could divide them into 4 groups: those who know the least about grammar (the 25 who got the lowest scores), those who know the most (the 25 highest scores), and two groups of 25 in between.<\/p>\n

I could also ask those same 100 people to predict how well<\/strong> they did on that test.<\/p>\n

Here’s the question: what’s the relationship between actual<\/strong> grammar knowledge and confidence<\/strong> about grammar knowledge?<\/p>\n

John Cleese — who is friends with David Dunning — sums up the findings this way:<\/p>\n

In order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place.<\/p>\n

Which means — and this is terribly funny — that if you\u2019re absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you\u2019re absolutely no good at it. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n

In other words:<\/p>\n

The students who got the lowest 25 scores averaged 17%<\/strong> on that quiz. And, they predicted (on average) that they got a 60%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Because they don’t know much grammar, they don’t know enough to recognize how little they know.<\/p>\n

In Dunning’s research, people who don’t know much about a discipline consistently overestimate their skill, competence, and knowledge base.<\/p>\n

Here’s a graph, adapted from figure 3 of Dunning and Kruger’s 1999 study, showing that relationship:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Adapted from figure 3 of Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one\u2019s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/h2>\n

Let the Ironies Begin<\/h2>\n

That graph might surprise you. In fact, you might be expecting a graph that looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Certainly that was the graph I was expecting to find when I looked at Kruger & Dunning’s 1999 study. After all, you can find that graph — or some variant — practically everywhere you look for information about Dunning-Kruger.<\/p>\n

It seems that the best-known Dunning-Kruger graph wasn’t created by Dunning or Kruger.<\/p>\n

If that’s true, that’s really weird. (I hope I’m wrong.)<\/p>\n

But this story gets curiouser. Check out this version:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This one has thrown in the label “Mount Stupid.” (You’ll find that on several Dunning-Kruger graphs.) And, amazingly, it explicitly credits the 1999 study for this image.<\/p>\n

That’s right. This website is calling other people stupid while providing an inaccurate source<\/strong> for its graph of stupidity. It is — on the one hand — mocking people for overestimating their knowledge, while — on the other hand — demonstrating the conspicuous limits of its own knowledge.<\/p>\n

Let’s try one more:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I am, quite honestly, praying that this is a joke. (The version I found is behind a paywall, so I can’t be sure.)<\/p>\n

If it’s not a joke, I have some suggestions. When you want to make fun of someone else for overestimating their knowledge,<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: remember that “no nothing” and “know nothing” don’t mean the same thing. Choose your spelling carefully. (“No nothing” is how an 8-year-old responds to this parental sentence: “Did you break the priceless vase and what are you holding behind your back?’)<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: The Nobel Prize in Psychology didn’t write this study. Kruger and Dunning<\/em> did.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: The Nobel Prize in Psychology doesn’t exist<\/em>. There is no such thing.<\/p>\n

Fourth<\/strong>: Dunning and Kruger won the Ig Nobel Prize<\/em> in Psychology in 2000. The Ig Nobel Prize is, of course, a parody.<\/a><\/p>\n

So, either this version is a coy collection of jokes, or someone who can’t spell the word “know” correctly is posting a graph about others’ incompetence.<\/p>\n

At this point, I honestly don’t know which is true. I do know that the god of Irony is tired and wants a nap.<\/p>\n

Closing Points<\/h2>\n

First<\/strong>: Karma dictates that in a post where I rib people for making obviously foolish mistakes, I will make an obviously foolish mistake. Please point it out to me. We’ll both get a laugh. You’ll get a free box of Triscuits.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: I haven’t provided sources for the graphs I’m decrying. My point is not to put down individuals, but to critique a culture-wide habit: passing along “knowledge” without making basic attempts to verify the source.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: I really want to know where this well-known graph comes from. If you know, please tell me! I’ve reached out to a few websites posting its early versions — I hope they’ll pass along the correct source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People who don’t know much about a topic typically overestimate their expertise. We call this the Dunning-Kruger Effect. So: what happens when someone who doesn’t know much about the Dunning-Kruger Effect tries to explain it? Brace yourself for an excess of irony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-5655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-skepticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5655"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5667,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5655\/revisions\/5667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}