Debunking the Dunning-Kruger effect – the least skilled people know how much they don’t know, but everyone thinks they are better than average
John Cleese, the British comedian, once summed up the idea of the Dunning–Kruger effect as, “If you are really, really stupid, then it’s impossible for you to know you are really, really stupid.” A quick search of the news brings up dozens of headlines connecting the Dunning–Kruger effect to everything from work to empathy and even to why Donald Trump was elected president.
As a math professor who teaches students to use data to make informed decisions, I am familiar with common mistakes people make when dealing with numbers. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the idea that the least skilled people overestimate their abilities more than anyone else. This sounds convincing on the surface and makes for excellent comedy. But in a recent paper, my colleagues and I suggest that the mathematical approach used to show this effect may be incorrect.
To test this, they gave 45 undergraduate students a 20-question logic test and then asked them to rate their own performance in two different ways.
First, Dunning and Kruger asked the students to estimate how many questions they got correct – a fairly straightforward assessment. Then, Dunning and Kruger asked the students to estimate how they did compared with the other students who took the test. This type of self-assessment requires students to make guesses about how others performed and is subject to a common cognitive mistake – most people consider themselves better than average.more
A black sea bass caught with rod and reel by Mrs. A. W. Barret. The fish weighed 416 pounds (188 kg) and had a length of 7 feet 10 inches (2.3 m) Santa Catalina Island, California, USA. 1901. pic.twitter.com/6ydaKULMGj
By December 1944, the momentum of World War II was clearly in the Allies’ favor. The new front in Europe, opened on D-Day, was costly. But Germany was losing on all three fronts. Still, it reportedly took the appearance of P-51s with paper mache drop tanks to drive home the point to German leaders.
Italy was essentially lost, with German troops holding a small sliver of the northernmost territory. Russia was roaring back across the oil fields of eastern Europe, cutting Germany off from vital fuel sources. And American, Canadian and British forces were pushing for the German border.
But Hitler and the Third Reich refused to accept the reality. Germany built up massive forces for Operation Watch on the Rhine, the counteroffensive that would be the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler still played with his maps and predicted Germany victory.
And even other senior German leaders seemed to believe it. The head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, reportedly accepted reality at one key moment: the first time he saw a P-51 Mustang over Berlin.
“Wings of War” tells the history of the visionaries and the obstacles from corrupt Generals that had to be overcome to build this revolutionary aircraft.
Germs and pestilence—and not merely the people who bore them—have shaped inflection point after inflection point in our species’ timeline, from our first major successful foray out of Africa to the rise of Christianity, to even the United States’ bloody bid for independence.
