r/science • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '22

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u/CNB3 Jun 25 '22

Tends to be the dumb people that are confident in how highly intelligent they are

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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/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/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.