“Clowns to the left of me, jokers on the right.” Ever had that feeling?
There’s a name for the cause of that feeling: The Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes
Where did we first start calling it the Dunning Kruger Effect? After this paper in 1999:
Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134.
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 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 their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Others had noted the effect earlier, but described a bit differently, or failed to set up experiments to confirm it as Dunning and Kruger did. If you watch, you’ll see it all around you.
Bertrand Russell observed eight decades ago:
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent are full of doubt.
– Bertrand Russell, The Triumph of Stupidity in Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell’s American Essays, 1931-1935 (Routledge, 1998), p. 28
We see it here, at the bathtub, with the occasional e-mail objecting that Millard Fillmore did, in fact, put the first bathtub in the White House. The e-mail will suggest we should read some history books to see. Or, we’ll see a lot of it in the textbook debates at the Texas State Board of Education, with people arguing that they know Darwin recanted, that all fossils are made up, and that DNA is a fiction, because they heard it at Sunday school, and Sunday school teachers would not lie.
Sometimes it’s difficult to separate Dunning-Kruger from just plain old gullibility; and how can we really distinguish it from the (misnamed) Barnum Effect (really, the Forer Effect)?
Sniffing out stupid and humorous, and sometimes malicious, distortions of history, we run into people under the spell of the effect way too often.
I’ve written about it rather randomly here before; this page is put here to pull the resources together in one convenient location.
To understand the effect, and the history, you should see these posts:
- “Quote of the moment: Bertrand Russell, on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, 64 years prescient”
- Jon Wilkins found this cartoon to explain it.
- Graphic version of the Dunning-Kruger effect (yes, it’s a cartoon, too)
- Kin Hubbard and Will Rogers described the practical dangers of the effect in the 1930s
- And the late Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, explained that intentional Dunning-Kruger Effect can be among the most dangerous — pretending to know what one does not know, often leads to disaster
- Isaac Asimov explained it, too, lamenting the power of ignorance, and the sad trends against knowledge
- Darwin observed the Dunning Kruger Effect, too — but didn’t name it at the time
The “triumph of stupidity.” Avoid it at all costs.
What examples do you have of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Comments are open.
More, and other resources:
- A 2003 paper on the effect, by Dunning and Kruger! in .pdf, from Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Errol Morris interviewed David Dunning in 2010 for the New York Times; no, lemon juice won’t make you invisible to bank surveillance cameras
- CRITICAL THINKING: “Ignorance Begets Confidence: The Dunning-Kruger Effect” (alwaysquestionauthority.com)
- The dunning-kruger effect (Donald Prothero’s article explainging the effect) (skepticblog.org)
- The Power of “I Don’t Know” (accidentalhedonist.com)
- Who you gonna believe, me or you own eyes? (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
- “The classic Dunning-Kruger Effect,” at Psychology Today blogs
- Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, on the “Dunning-Kruger-Madoff Effect” in economic prognostication
- Profile of David Dunning at the Cornell University Psychology Department page
- Profile of Justin Kruger, at the Cornell University Self and Social Insight Lab (SaSI)
- Of course, someone has to come along and say Dunning and Kruger don’t know what they’re talking about: See here, response here; and more discussion here
- [Added January 29, 2014] Brilliant! Explanation of Dunning Kruger Effect, and arguing on blogs, by Gary Farber in a guest post at Obsidian Wings. Four years ago.
- Cornell’s Tumblr points to interview with Dr. Dunning at Reddit, on how to avoid the D-K effect
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Hawking, describing Dunning Kruger pragmatically.
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John Cleese knows.
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The Dunning Kruger effect might not be real. And it is misunderstood by most because it – according to Dr. David Dunning – is only properly unerstod as being about us, – not them! – It was .n.o.t. meant to show how biased the uneducated are.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real
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Dunning Kruger effect and global warming.
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This is good: Dunning’s TEDS talk.
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Is it a form of Dunning Kruger Effect? Maybe we need to renew this post and expand it to cover conspiracy idea victims.
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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In all disciplines?
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A story of Dinning Kruger effect in our time.
Thread here:
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Dunning Kruger effect still plagues us.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/logical-take/202006/the-galileo-gambit-and-appealing-ignorance
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The counter case?
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Good one! Thanks for the pointer to Yeats. Didn’t know.
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“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. “
WB Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Written 1919, published 1920
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
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Dunning Kruger effect found in climate change discussions.
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More examples.
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And, on to antivaccine stuff:
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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Claims of such studies are a demonstration of the Dunning Kruger effect.
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Striving for accuracy in science? ORLY?
Why not discuss that IQ studies consistently show unequal IQ averages between human racial and ethnic groups?
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At no point I’ve found do the researchers say this is the final answer to anything.
Do you disagree? Why? What’s your evidence?
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Another FINAL answer to authority! Congratulations as the Psych approach is made manifest by…guess who, the Psych folks themselves.
“Believe what we, or I, tell you because we are experts and have crossed your bridge of stupidity and ignorance”.
Ask an aeronautical engineer how bumble bees fly. Hell, they don’t even agree on how airplanes lift.
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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A modern demonstration of Dunning Kruger Effect and the Rogers-Hubbard Corollary, that it’s not what we DON’T know that gets us into trouble, but what we know, that is not so:
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From Dr. Dunning hisownself, probably good advice:
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We need to track this one down. Did Twain really say it?
No. Turns out Twain didn’t say it. http://ianchadwick.com/blog/and-again-more-mis-attibuted-quotes-online/
Who did?
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You can get even better background from this podcast, I’ll wager:
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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Oops! Note chart, claimed to be from some knowledgeable person, has some glaring errors, and fails to cite itself to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon (linked in the article above):
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This climate “skeptic” blog at least provides a warning, rather like a skunk raising its tail, when it posts Daniel Boorstin’s words in the upper right corner.
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/enron-environmentalism-the-carbon-credits-scam-pumps-millions-of-tonnes-more-greenhouse-gases-into-the-atmosphere.html
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Great point. In my years staffing the Senate, I was astounded at how often senators were happy to block legislation based on some point of misinformation or disinformation they had seized on, after their colleagues had spent years gathering the information, writing the law, holding hearings, refining the legislation, and battling lobbyists to get the bill done.
The general public is no better than senators in that regard. Sadly.
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Funny, I just blogged about the D-K effect and American race relations, with individuals differing perceptions of the national and local scene, earlier this week: http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-dunning-kruger-effect-and-race.html
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More on Russell’s quote:
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/04/self-doubt/
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Darwin’s observations on the Dunning Kruger Effect:
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Rats can be smarter than humnans?
That’s not an excuse for humans to act stupider, or meaner, than rats.
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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John Cleese on something akin to the Dunning Kruger Effect:
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Quotes Dunning himself:
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[Not sure what happened to video below; looking for another copy, or where the site moved.]
(Thanks to @uknowISS)
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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I am a dunning I wonder if the good doctor has the same dunning effect that all the Dunnings I know have.? They think they know it all clowns to the left of me jokers to the right! But the doc. Left out the most important part. Here I am stuck in the middle with you! The true Dunning effect.
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I am a dunning I wonder if the good doctor has the same dunning effect that all the Dunnings I know have.? They think they know it all
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Cartoon fan Donald Prothero posted at his Facebook site:
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[…] Dunning-Kruger Effect […]
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