Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren voke Obam here with an episode from the archives
Speaker 1: for you back when our host was one Christian Sagar.
Speaker 1: This is one that's come up, and I think all
Speaker 1: of our conversations and frustrations lately are less informed people
Speaker 1: more confident. And if so, why, Hey brain Stuff, it's
Speaker 1: me Christian Sager. If you're like most people, you think
Speaker 1: you're very good at some things and are able to
Speaker 1: admit you're less good at others, you probably think you're
Speaker 1: superbly talented in one or two areas. Hey, you may
Speaker 1: be right. You try to be honest with yourself about
Speaker 1: your strong points and your weak ones, and you likely
Speaker 1: shake your head in pity at people you see as
Speaker 1: well stupid. You say things like, why don't they understand
Speaker 1: that they're bad at doing stuff? Well, there is an answer,
Speaker 1: but you're not gonna like it. And this answer doesn't
Speaker 1: just apply to people you think of as dumb. It
Speaker 1: applies to everyone on earth, including you and me. It's
Speaker 1: not a matter of intelligence, necessarily a difficult thing to measure,
Speaker 1: but it is related to competence, the ability to do
Speaker 1: something well. In A psychologist named David Dunning and his
Speaker 1: grad assistant Justin Krueger tested a group of students in
Speaker 1: several categories, the ability to think logically, to write chromatically,
Speaker 1: and to spot funny jokes. They also asked the students
Speaker 1: to rate their skills in these categories, that is, when
Speaker 1: they notice something weird. The people scoring below average on
Speaker 1: these tests were just incompetent in these categories. They also
Speaker 1: didn't know they were incompetent. And here's the kicker. The
Speaker 1: less competent they were, the more competent they ranked themselves.
Speaker 1: This is a phenomenon called illusory superiority. This is a
Speaker 1: cognitive bias wherein people tend to rate their own abilities
Speaker 1: as above average. Multiple studies have proven this effect in
Speaker 1: everything from firearms to college debates and med students opinions
Speaker 1: of their interviewing skills. It doesn't seem to matter what
Speaker 1: specific skill we're talking about. The less a person knows
Speaker 1: about it, the more likely they are to overestimate their knowledge.
Speaker 1: While Dunning and Krueger popularize this effect in modern society,
Speaker 1: they weren't the first people to notice the relationship between confidence, modesty,
Speaker 1: and skill. Philosophers throughout the ages have contemplated this idea,
Speaker 1: like Bertrand Russell, who famously wrote the trouble with the
Speaker 1: world is that the stupid are cock sure and the
Speaker 1: intelligent are full of doubt. And here's another weird thing.
Speaker 1: People with actual competency are likely to actually underestimate their abilities.
Speaker 1: Researchers believe this modesty comes because competent people are more
Speaker 1: aware of how much they don't actually know, as well
Speaker 1: as their field in general, they also consistently overestimate the
Speaker 1: performance ability of others. It all goes back to one
Speaker 1: primary thing, meta cognition. Meta cognition is the ability to
Speaker 1: be aware of and understand your own thought process. In
Speaker 1: other words, the ability to think about how you think.
Speaker 1: People tend to evaluate themselves through what Dunning and Krueger
Speaker 1: called a top down approach. Instead of objectively measuring their performance,
Speaker 1: people start with their preconceived notions of their skill and
Speaker 1: use that belief to evaluate their performance. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Ben Bullen and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other relatively well
Speaker 1: informed topics, visit our home planet how Stuff Works Dot
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