The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological phenomenon where people with a little knowledge on a topic massively overestimate their knowledge or competence in that subject. This results in an over-inflated self-assessment of their abilities and strong, but misplaced convictions relating to it. In essence, they don’t know enough to know where the gaps in their knowledge lie. Without knowing what they don’t know, they are convinced that what they do know is absolutely right and correct.
The converse is true. People who are relatively expert in a field are all too aware of the deficiencies in their knowledge and can sometimes struggle to put across an opinion without a whole host of qualifications and caveats. Einstein summarised this nicely by saying, ‘as our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.’ The more aware you are of that darkness pressing in on the light of your knowledge, the more difficult it is to pretend to certainty without feeling like a charlatan.
Following their original experiments, Dunning and Kruger found that ‘incompetent individuals …. will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance’ and that they are ‘less able to recognise competence when they see it’. Not only do they have absolute belief in themselves, they are unable to recognise a true expert when they come across one.
When I first learned about this, it felt almost life changing. Suddenly it allowed me to make sense of a lot of the interactions in the world around me - particularly those that fly around on social media. It also allowed me to make sense of the baffling arguments we all sometimes have with people on topics about which we have some degree of knowledge, and about which they have none.
But, hot on the heels of this reassuring realisation, came the self doubt. Knowing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is great when you feel like the person who holds the greater knowledge, but when and where am I actually exhibiting the effect? What are the areas of my knowledge that are so thin that I don’t realise that I know nothing? When am I the one banging on about an ill-informed and logically dubious opinion? Because not realising that you are falling foul of the Dunning-Kruger effect is intrinsic to the phenomenon.
It is safest then to always assume that our knowledge is imperfect, that our opinions should be open to change, and that we may often simply be wrong. Better to be like Socrates and accept that true wisdom is knowing that you really know nothing. If we all approached our interactions like this, life might be a lot less heated.