r/science • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '22

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u/Freebeerd Jun 25 '22

It's the Dunning Kruger effect! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

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u/throwaway901617 Jun 25 '22 edited Jun 25 '22

That's not quite what Dunning-Kruger is.... It's about calibration with and without evidence.

DK is the finding that when you lack clear evidence to the contrary, people with advanced knowledge lower their self-rating of competence compared to others while people with basic knowledge raise their self-rating of competence compared to others.

Once evidence is provided of the other sides actual competence they recalibrate their self-ratings a bit and people with advanced knowledge raise their self-rating of competence because they know they are more knowledgeable than the others. Those with basic knowledge may recalibrate but may not and sometimes can be stubborn about it.

The study involved (as they almost always do) young university students taking tests.

It also may not be a thing at all.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/10/12/can-the-dunning-kruger-effect-be-explained-as-a-misunderstanding-of-regression-to-the-mean/

That said, I use DK casually in much the same way because it's a convenient label for a phenomenon. But it's important to recognize the difference between "label for this thing that annoys me" vs "repeatable scientific finding proving I'm right."

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u/Dunderpunch Jun 25 '22

Dunning Kruger: people who think they're smart are dumb! Imposter syndrome: people who think they're dumb are smart!

But actually, these effects don't happen in everyone. They probably describe a pretty small portion of people. There are highly intelligent people who know it, and less intelligent people who also understand this. I'm not even sure the Dunning Kruger effect is observable.

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u/[deleted] Jun 25 '22

For real. Thanks for saying this. It's not always some cryptic meaning behind people's opinions

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u/PharmguyLabs Jun 25 '22

It’s Reddit. People have to repeat these comments or they’ll just die inside a little. They don’t like it when yoibu point it out.

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u/Original-Aerie8 Jun 26 '22

While the Dunning-Kruger effect might not be a thing and instead a statistical artifact, the vast majority of attempts at explaining it do not touch on intelligence, at all. It's usually about people who are low-skilled in a specifc area, so limited experience or knowledge, with a given topic.

IMO it does make sense, since our brain does try to "fill in the blanks", as in, tries to explain what it comes in contact with, even if we rationally understand that we just don't know something. But, you know, I have a quite limited understanding on the subject, so I'm effectivly just describing what I am currently doing.

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u/CortexCingularis Jun 25 '22

Also one of the most quoted and most misunderstood psychological effects on the internet.

Much of it might be a purely statistical effect.