Graphs, graphs graphs! The robot's art
Judge Holden, the rad Satan figure in Cormac McCarthy’s rad hallucinatory western Blood Meridian, observes that “everything that exists without my knowledge exists without my permission.” A palpable satisfaction comes from naming things, particularly when those things are familiar but somehow yet nameless. Hence the beauty of schadenfreude, or the French expression for thinking of a witty comeback after the moment has passed, esprit d’escalier—”the spirit of the stairs.” Such terms are pleasing because they identify things we recognize but which previously blended into the larger field; they quantify experiences out of the miasma of life. I was therefore extremely pleased, yesterday, when I ran across the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the tendency of underskilled individuals to rate their abilities much higher than average, for precisely the same reasons that they are underskilled.
As Wikipedia pithily puts it, “this bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.” When you are new at something, or when you know very little about it for some other reason, you are much less likely to identify flaws in your own execution. Kurt Vonnegut put it more bluntly when he observed that “the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.” It’s a familiar phenomenon to anyone has ever argued politics with someone who doesn’t follow politics, say, or taught an introductory karate class.
The genius of Messrs. Dunning and Kruger was to capture this experience in quantifiable, scientific data. Experimenting on Cornell undergraduates,* 
they asked participants to rate their own abilities in logical reasoning, grammar and sense of humor. D&K then administered tests in same and correlated the results. Quote:
Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.
Even after they were shown the results of the tests, the bottom quartile continued to estimate their skills at above-average. Meanwhile, the best-performing quartile underestimated their own abilities. Those who found the tests relatively easy “erroneously assumed” that they were also easy for others. Presumably, that was a manifestation of the same phenomenon seen in the bottom quartile, who thought the tests were easy, too.
“The best lack all conviction,” William Butler Yeats wrote, “and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The Dunning-Kruger effect doesn’t exactly explain a lot of recognizable experiences, but it certainly names them. Consider evolution-denial, for example—a situation where the people who know least about a subject are most confident in their arguments. There’s also this Amazon review of A Brief History of Time, in which the reviewer criticizes Stephen Hawking for being “unable to put his ideas in comprehensible language.”
For this reason, the reviewer believes that the book is an example of “the ubiquitous Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome we see so often today.” Finding himself unable to comprehend a book on theoretical astrophysics, he concludes that the whole thing is bullshit. Observing that many, many lauded ideas of the modern world are incomprehensible to him, he concludes that the whole era in which he lives is afflicted with a fatuous credulity. In this way, a particularly dumb person nominates himself as one of the smartest.
Stupidity and confidence go hand-in-hand, in other words. If I were a misanthropic curmudgeon, I might say that contemporary America—with its emphasis on self-esteem and its insistence that each one of us is Very Special—encourages this sort of thinking. But that would be to issue an unfalsifiable hypothesis. It’s not like there’s quantitative evidence that people outside the United States are less vulnerable to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. There is definitely not a 2003 article in Monitor on Psychology that says this:
Regardless of how pervasive the phenomenon is, it is clear from Dunning’s and others’ work that many Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth. It is interesting, therefore, to see the phenomenon’s mirror opposite in another culture. In research comparing North American and East Asian self-assessments, Heine of the University of British Columbia finds that East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities, with an aim toward improving the self and getting along with others.
Meanwhile, American culture produced this guy.
Most non-Anglo educational systems that I have had contact with (French, Catalan, Brazilian) browbeat their students into believing that they are stupid, and this opinion of their own self-worth is deeply engraved for the rest of their lives. When I was teaching in a French school, I often heard teachers directly insult students for giving a wrong answer. Not surprisingly, most French adults have come out believing that they not very competent in literature, philosophy (a high school subject here), math, etc.
Americans, particularly stupid Americans, have an inflated sense of their intelligence. But this confidence also leads them to create and take risks. America is the world’s innovator, blah, blah, blah. I’d rather send my kids (who knows, someday…) to American schools, and have them come out a bit more ignorant and over-confident.
I love today’s post. Great work.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a great find. Thanks for sharing. I appreciated your identification and description of the joy of naming something previously felt, too.
Para-phrasing your writing in order to comment on it is difficult, because I never find a better or more economical way to recount it. #waystofeelclumsy
I remain suspicious of claims that America suffers from an “emphasis on self-esteem and its insistence that each one of us is Very Special.” Data such as your presented exists about Americans’ persistent over-estimation of self. But I haven’t seen data or compelling arguments that some new culture of self-esteem is the mechanism that creates that inflated estimation of abilities.
My gut is the roots of such high self-valuation are both old and numerous. I mean, city upon a hill. Manifest destiny. I know a sense of national purpose isn’t the same as aggrandizement of self, but I bet they are related. And while national differences in mistaken self-regard eliminate certain explanation of self-importance, they don’t prove that an “everyone is special” culture is at work in America.
I’ve never understood why teachers and authority figures can’t at least be honest. There’s no reason to call a kid stupid if he can’t answer a question but there’s no reason to compliment him. Just say, “that was wrong, let’s figure it out,” which is, you know, kinda the best way to approach mistakes in life. I’ve only taught one-on-one so that makes it easier, but I still feel like it’s the only appropriate response. Similarly, if you’re coaching little league and some kid gives it his all but still strikes out, you can say, “good try,” but if a kid isn’t paying attention and misses a pop up you can probably tell him to pay some fucking attention.
This is why I accurately rank my extraordinary intelligence.
After re-watching Season 4 of The Wire, talking to my parents and brother (all educators), seeing that idiot from Texas on Colbert, and reading this, I really have a great feeling about the future. And to quote Mose, “I love today’s post. Great work.”
I am astounded you haven’t crossed paths with Dunning-Kruger sooner, learned as you are. Like Godwin’s law, it is a requisite for arguing on the internet.
Allow me to tell you about a few things that will also amaze you if you haven’t discovered them yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_(TV_series)
http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2010/12/
http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Cavewoman-Other-Evolutionary-Neurology/dp/0393048314
No embedding eh? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0zM0uz-5rM
Great post today, one of my all time favorites. Although, I have to admit that at least some of the joy I’m experiencing is just relief on my part: after reading that headline, I felt pretty sure I’d scroll down to find an image of my own face staring back at me.
But anyway, this one should go down in the Combat! pantheon of paragraphs:
“For this reason, the reviewer believes that the book is an example of “the ubiquitous Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome we see so often today.” Finding himself unable to comprehend a book on theoretical astrophysics, he concludes that the whole thing is bullshit. Observing that many, many lauded ideas of the modern world are incomprehensible to him, he concludes that the whole era in which he lives is afflicted with a fatuous credulity. In this way, a particularly dumb person nominates himself as one of the smartest.”
Not to be pedantic, but the genius reviewing A Brief History of Time is committing the Argument from Incredulity fallacy more than the Dunning-Kruger effect:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity
At least I think so. I may have just DK’d myself.
“Stupidity and confidence go hand-in-hand,…”
And you have every right to be so proud of yourself.
Who write very well for a dummy.
I seldom comment, however i did some searching
and wound up here The Dunning-Kruger Effect is awesome,
you guys : COMBAT!. And I actually do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright.
Is it only me or does it look like a few of the comments come across like they are left by brain dead folks?
:-P And, if you are posting on additional places, I’d like to keep up with anything
fresh you have to post. Could you make a list of
all of your shared pages like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?