Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,
Speaker 1: and what can I tell you? His name is on
Speaker 1: the tip of your tongue. You know all about his research,
Speaker 1: You know all about the charts that the Internet created
Speaker 1: based on his research. You probably didn't know that that
Speaker 1: wasn't originally his work. David Dunning, famous for the Dunning
Speaker 1: Kruger Effect, professor of psychology at Michigan. We talk about
Speaker 1: everything his research, why people don't know what they don't know,
Speaker 1: how we could get better at decision making. Just absolutely
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation. If you're at all interested in human
Speaker 1: cognition and psychology in why we think we're better at
Speaker 1: tasks than we really are, then you're gonna find this
Speaker 1: to be an absolutely fascinating discussion. So, with no further ado,
Speaker 1: my conversation with David Dunning. This is Masters in Business
Speaker 1: with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest
Speaker 1: this week is David Dunning. He is a professor of
Speaker 1: psychology at the University of Michigan, where he focuses on
Speaker 1: the psychology underlying human misbelief He is best known for
Speaker 1: his study with colleague Justin Krueger, Unskilled and unaware of it,
Speaker 1: how difficulties and recognizing one's own incompetence lead to self
Speaker 1: inflated assessments. Dunning Krueger showed that people who were the
Speaker 1: worst performers significantly overestimated how good they were. He is
Speaker 1: also the author of the book Self Insight, Roadblocks and
Speaker 1: Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself. David Dunning, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. It's a pleasure to be here. I have
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.
Speaker 1: I am a giant fan of your work, and I
Speaker 1: have to start with a really simple question. What's the
Speaker 1: origin of the study? What led you to a thesis
Speaker 1: that we're really bad at self evaluation? Well, if you're
Speaker 1: an academic, you meet up with many students, and you
Speaker 1: meet up with many colleagues who say outrageous things, and
Speaker 1: you just have to wonder, don't they know what they're saying?
Speaker 1: Is let me say this diplomatically odd, suboptimal. And over
Speaker 1: the years I just was intrigued with finding out whether
Speaker 1: or not people knew when they were saying things that
Speaker 1: were outrageous. We're obviously wrong on the face of it.
Speaker 1: And so one day Justin Krueger walked into my office
Speaker 1: said he wanted to a study with me, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have this high high risk reward study to do,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with a question I've often
Speaker 1: wondered about. And so we did the first original series
Speaker 1: of studies and were astonished at how little people who
Speaker 1: didn't know I didn't know about how little they knew.
Speaker 1: So I was on the impression and that most academics
Speaker 1: have a thesis and there's some data supporting it, and
Speaker 1: when they go out and test it, they have a
Speaker 1: little confirmation bias and they see what they expected to see.
Speaker 1: You're saying, you guys were just shocked by the results
Speaker 1: of this study. That's right. I mean we expected it
Speaker 1: to work, because if you think about the logic of it,
Speaker 1: it has to work. The question was one of magnitude.
Speaker 1: When a student was failing the course, for example, or
Speaker 1: were giving them a pop quiz on grammar, uh, did
Speaker 1: they have some inkling that they were performing really poorly?
Speaker 1: And the answer was maybe a little, but not much,
Speaker 1: and they were missing their true performance level by a
Speaker 1: mile by a mile. So so how much of this that?
Speaker 1: That really raises um a number of questions. So I
Speaker 1: love the phrase metacognition, the ability to self evaluate your
Speaker 1: skill set and your findings. Essentially find that this is
Speaker 1: highly correlated with an underlying skill. Whenever I try and
Speaker 1: explain this to a lay person, it's pro golfers know
Speaker 1: how good they are and where the weaknesses in their
Speaker 1: games are. Amateurs have no idea that they're not remotely
Speaker 1: as good as they think they are. That is that
Speaker 1: a fair Oh I'm a perfect example of this. So
Speaker 1: when I go out in golf, I often end up
Speaker 1: in the in the rough when I when I drive
Speaker 1: the ball and then I see the ball going the
Speaker 1: roof and I go out to find it later on,
Speaker 1: and I'm always over guessing how far the ball went
Speaker 1: in the rough by about thirty yards. And I know this,
Speaker 1: yet every time I drive the ball into the rough,
Speaker 1: I'm looking in the wrong plates. Uh so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean amateur golfers don't know such terms as of course
Speaker 1: management for example. Uh there's a number of concepts and
Speaker 1: number of ideas they just simply don't have available to them.
Speaker 1: And as a consequence, I think they're they're doing the
Speaker 1: best possible job, when in fact there's a whole realm
Speaker 1: of competency as they don't know about. They're just wholly
Speaker 1: unaware of what they don't know about. That's right. So
Speaker 1: you begin theer with a amusing anecdote. Tell us about
Speaker 1: out the Pittsburgh bank robber MacArthur Wheeler. Well, MacArthur Wheeler
Speaker 1: was a aspirant bank robber who decided to go out
Speaker 1: and rob, but needed a disguise. And he had heard
Speaker 1: that if you rub your face with lemon juice, it
Speaker 1: renders the face um uh, fuzzy or even uh invisible
Speaker 1: to bank security cameras, and so he actually did test
Speaker 1: it out. He actually rubbed his face with uninduced at home,
Speaker 1: pointed a polaroid camera or whatever at his face, and
Speaker 1: then he wasn't there. He miss aimed the camera is
Speaker 1: he thought he was insible, but he thought he was invisible.
Speaker 1: He went out with no actual disguise, rob to Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: area banks during the daytime, um uh, was immediately caught
Speaker 1: on security cameras. Uh. Those tapes were broadcast on the news,
Speaker 1: and he himself was caught before the eleven o'clock news hour,
Speaker 1: and he was incredulous because, as he said, I wore
Speaker 1: the juice. I wore the juice. Uh. So um thus
Speaker 1: ended his career. But these are sorts of mistakes we
Speaker 1: make all the time. We think we we have a
Speaker 1: strategy that's going to work, and to our surprise, the
Speaker 1: world has a different lesson for us to learn. So
Speaker 1: medic cognition sometimes looks a little bit like over confidence.
Speaker 1: How similar or different are the two? Well, metic cognition
Speaker 1: is a number of things, a number of skills that
Speaker 1: underlie um being able to evaluate your judgments, evaluate your decisions.
Speaker 1: So some often it's over confidence. Usually it's over confidence.
Speaker 1: It can be under confidence, thinking you can't do something
Speaker 1: that you can do. Uh. It might be over confidence
Speaker 1: or under confidence. But does your confidence rise and fall
Speaker 1: with the accuracy of your judgment? So is there a
Speaker 1: relationship whether or not your confidences is a speed dometer
Speaker 1: that overstates or understates how well uh you're doing. But
Speaker 1: there it also is knowing how to make a judgment, uh,
Speaker 1: knowing when to stop thinking and start acting. So knowing
Speaker 1: when uh, there's a doubt that you really should be
Speaker 1: following up on. So over confidence as a phenomenon I
Speaker 1: think lies within a whole family of skills that you
Speaker 1: can call metacognition, which is basically skill in knowing how
Speaker 1: to evaluate your thinking and control you're thinking. Quite fascinating,
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about your unskilled and unaware
Speaker 1: of it. This blew up into one of the most
Speaker 1: famous psychology papers ever. When when you and Krueger were
Speaker 1: writing this, did you have any idea that it was
Speaker 1: going to be this explosive? No, because I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to have trouble being published, because it actually
Speaker 1: is an unusual piece of work given the usual structure
Speaker 1: of a paper in the journal we ultimately submitted to.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it blew up was a big surprise.
Speaker 1: The fact that it got published was also a big surprise,
Speaker 1: which was very very happy because internally I thought it
Speaker 1: was a good piece of work, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: if the world was going to agree. So I I've
Speaker 1: seen your work misstated in a variety of ways. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have. Also. The one that I noticed all
Speaker 1: the time is stupid people don't know they're stupid. And
Speaker 1: while that could very well be true, that is not
Speaker 1: the basic theme of of your research. Is it no,
Speaker 1: we were very clear from the outset that the Dunne
Speaker 1: Ruger effect is something that can visit anybody at any time.
Speaker 1: That is, each of us has our own pockets of
Speaker 1: incompetence and we just don't know when we wander into them.
Speaker 1: So it uh well. Often the one mistake that people
Speaker 1: make is thinking about the Dunne Krueger effect is about them,
Speaker 1: those as you say, stupid people out there, and the
Speaker 1: paper really was really about us and ourselves and being
Speaker 1: vigilant about the fact that sometimes we're going to wander
Speaker 1: into our own little personal disaster. Is not knowing that
Speaker 1: a disaster is imminent. So people trying to explain Dunning
Speaker 1: Krueger themselves are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effects in
Speaker 1: many different ways. So if you give me a moment,
Speaker 1: two different ways um that people get it wrong. First
Speaker 1: is to think about other people and it's not about me.
Speaker 1: The second is thinking that incompetent people are the most
Speaker 1: confident people in the room. That's not necessarily true. Occasionally
Speaker 1: that shows up in our data, but they are usually
Speaker 1: less confident than the really competent people, but not that much.
Speaker 1: And but the real thing that I think is fascinating
Speaker 1: and this has only happened in the past five years.
Speaker 1: Is that if you google images of the Dunning Kruger effect,
Speaker 1: the charts, the chart, well we did that. Those aren't
Speaker 1: our charts. So you didn't do Mount Stupid or the
Speaker 1: value of despair, and no, we did not. That has
Speaker 1: nothing to do whatsoever with our ninety paper or anything
Speaker 1: that we did subsequently. And uh, two notes of At first,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's delicious that a lot of people
Speaker 1: think of the Dunning Kruger effect. They're talking about the
Speaker 1: Dunning Kruger effect, their videotaping talks and Dunning Kruger effect,
Speaker 1: and what they're talking about is not the Dunning Kruger effect. Um,
Speaker 1: they're suffering the effect, about the effect itself. Um, that's
Speaker 1: the first. The second note, though, is given this situation,
Speaker 1: we did face a dilemma in the lab, how do
Speaker 1: we fix this? How do we correct this? And so
Speaker 1: this is true. In part we decided the most efficient
Speaker 1: ethical thing to do was to steal the idea from
Speaker 1: the internet, because the other problem with the idea, other
Speaker 1: than it not being the Dunning Kuger effect, is that's
Speaker 1: it's more interesting than the Dunning Kruger effect. So but
Speaker 1: we stole the idea, tested it, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that mount stupid value of despair a plateau of enlightenment
Speaker 1: time course of people see that. We pretty much get
Speaker 1: that um pattern as we pay people through a completely
Speaker 1: novel task. So internet is right. So so in other words,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm intrigued and fascinated by this. You never
Speaker 1: put out a chart. I always assumed that that chart
Speaker 1: had to come from your data, because what are people
Speaker 1: just brewing lines and making it up and ps it
Speaker 1: intuitively looks right. You would assume, Hey, when so I
Speaker 1: play tennis, I only started recently, less than ten years ago.
Speaker 1: And when you start out and you're starting hit the
Speaker 1: ball and you feel like you have some control and
Speaker 1: you have some skill, and and then you're you're working
Speaker 1: your way up that mount stupid. And then when you
Speaker 1: actually start to develop some skill, not that I really have,
Speaker 1: but I'm better than I was five years ago, you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what the heck I was doing, not
Speaker 1: just a ball and getting lucky when it catches the tape,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you realize, oh, I'm way
Speaker 1: down this And then you continue playing, you get a
Speaker 1: little better and a little better. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is all rationalization, but it intuitively seems to make sense. Well,
Speaker 1: not only does it intuitively make sense, it turns out
Speaker 1: to make sense. Uh. And in a paper with Carmen Sanchez,
Speaker 1: we were able to demonstrate that basically what happens is
Speaker 1: when you start a task. And what we did is
Speaker 1: we had people. We put people in a post apocalyptic
Speaker 1: world where they had to without supervision, but with feedback
Speaker 1: diagnose who was infected with a zombie disease I hope,
Speaker 1: hoping that that wasn't something that people had experienced with.
Speaker 1: And basically what happens is if you're a beginner, you
Speaker 1: start out way at the beginning, being appropriately conscious. You
Speaker 1: really don't know what you're doing, and you know it.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that you have a few successes
Speaker 1: they're probably due to luck more than skill, and you
Speaker 1: think you have it. That is, people arrive at a
Speaker 1: theory based on data which is far too early, far
Speaker 1: too sparse, and far too unreliable, but they think I
Speaker 1: got it, and then the next phase that they have
Speaker 1: to go through is realizing, oh, that theory really doesn't work. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so we've been able to track that a to
Speaker 1: show that uh and a number of studies. So the
Speaker 1: internet is right. UM. I'm very pleased with its intuition
Speaker 1: on this one. UM, but it is a little bit
Speaker 1: odd to get credit for an insight that we never had,
Speaker 1: but we're very happy to steal. So essentially, when you
Speaker 1: run the data showing UM the correlation between skill and
Speaker 1: UM ability to self evaluate, you end up with a
Speaker 1: chart that looks in this paper, looks remarkably similar to
Speaker 1: all the various pop psychology uh mount stupid charts that
Speaker 1: are out there. Well. Yeah, as you gain experience, you
Speaker 1: unfortunately start with a burst of overconfidence. I got this
Speaker 1: you No, you don't. And then experience basically is correcting
Speaker 1: your flattering impression of your skill as time goes on,
Speaker 1: until at some point learning stops because of experiences, not
Speaker 1: new or learning does experience human limits. But that that
Speaker 1: is a pattern. By the way, if anybody flies an airplane,
Speaker 1: they perfectly understand this pattern. It's not beginning pilots who
Speaker 1: are the most dangerous. It's pilots with let's say six
Speaker 1: hundred UM flight hours. They have enough experience. I think
Speaker 1: that they've got this, and they enter into what's referred
Speaker 1: to as the killing zone where accents are most likely
Speaker 1: to happen. All of this raises the question of how
Speaker 1: much of an independent skill is self assessment? Or asked differently,
Speaker 1: do you have to be skilled at the underlying task
Speaker 1: in hands in order to have any skill set in
Speaker 1: evaluating it or can they be learned independently. I think
Speaker 1: research actually has to look at this a little bit more. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we know, and we followed
Speaker 1: up on this is there's um direct skill in doing
Speaker 1: the task, direct skill and doing the judgment, and then
Speaker 1: there is potentially another layer which is evaluating the judgment.
Speaker 1: The question is how much does that second judgment rely
Speaker 1: on knowledge in the first And from our data it no,
Speaker 1: It's clear that accuracy in knowing whether or not you're
Speaker 1: right is very correlated with accuracy in the first place.
Speaker 1: Are you really good at the skill? Can you reach
Speaker 1: an accurate judgment? Now? It's not true in everything. It's
Speaker 1: not true in golf. Um, I know just how bad
Speaker 1: my golf game is because I tend to score my
Speaker 1: rounds not in terms of shots, but in terms of
Speaker 1: how many balls did I lose, of course, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a metric that gives me a pretty good
Speaker 1: indication of how bad I am. So you could self
Speaker 1: evaluate without even seeing your skill, your your actual scorecard score.
Speaker 1: You just count the lost balls. That yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: real thing. Um And but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: skills though that uh, accuracy at the medicaguntive task. Judging
Speaker 1: whether or not you're right that skill really depends on
Speaker 1: your skill in the first test, which is gaining a
Speaker 1: right judgment. And for example of financial forecasting would be
Speaker 1: an example. That's easy pickings, that's fishing a barrel from
Speaker 1: what I hear. And giving a good lecture in my world, well,
Speaker 1: you do have to judge internally, am I really giving
Speaker 1: a good lecture or not? You can't really depend on
Speaker 1: the audience. Audiences can be good, audiences can be bad.
Speaker 1: And so but the choices you make, um, well, they
Speaker 1: depend on skill. But your evaluation of those choices probably
Speaker 1: depend on how good you are and knowing what a
Speaker 1: good lecture looks like, what a good lecture sounds like.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about academic psychology and
Speaker 1: your background and what it's like teaching these days. You
Speaker 1: got your PhD at Stanford at a time when I
Speaker 1: guess you could still say it today. It was the
Speaker 1: mecca of psychology, wasn't it? Yes? It was. So who
Speaker 1: would you study under? I studied under Ross primarily was
Speaker 1: also mentored a little bit by Phoebe Elsworth, whose last
Speaker 1: few years I've been a colleague of at Michigan. But
Speaker 1: it really was a village um. Everybody among the faculty
Speaker 1: was on the same page, so to speak. And so
Speaker 1: I'd have to say that entire faculty raised me as
Speaker 1: it did a lot of other people. Quite interesting. So
Speaker 1: you've been studying psychology for a long time. Have you
Speaker 1: found in the rest of your life's decision making that
Speaker 1: you've become more rational and a bitter decision maker. I
Speaker 1: think life has provided those lessons. Yes, and I've certainly
Speaker 1: become more experienced in my work. So, Um, I bear
Speaker 1: the scars, Uh, I bear the wounds, but I do
Speaker 1: think that I am a little wiser because of it.
Speaker 1: I One of the things, or one of the principles
Speaker 1: I often live by, is are you vaguely embarrassed by
Speaker 1: something you did five ten years go? And so I'll
Speaker 1: read things that I did five or ten years ago,
Speaker 1: and I find myself I shouldn't have done it that way,
Speaker 1: and I take that as a pleasant emotion. It's suggests
Speaker 1: I'm in a different place now than I was back then.
Speaker 1: So I go through something similar in every five years.
Speaker 1: I'm mortified of the five year younger version of me. Um.
Speaker 1: But I never took the next step to say, well,
Speaker 1: I guess this means I'm growing. I always been just
Speaker 1: so horrified at at the younger version. Um, I didn't
Speaker 1: make the leap that. Oh, I guess this means that
Speaker 1: that's progress. Um. So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: about things like that, about learning and norms. You write
Speaker 1: a lot about social norms. Why do you find this
Speaker 1: topic so so fascinating? Well, social norms, I think is
Speaker 1: the surprisingly understudying thing in the behavioral sciences. There are
Speaker 1: people who study it, but social norms are an incredible
Speaker 1: guide both to successful human behavior, not only for individuals
Speaker 1: but for society but also at times, um, the source
Speaker 1: of the greatest calamity, if you will, so, Um, why
Speaker 1: is it? Give us some examples to better understand that? Well?
Speaker 1: I think that the clearest example that comes to mind is,
Speaker 1: let's take norms of politeness. And let's talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that the FAA has recorded I believe, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure the numbers sixteen times where the crew in the
Speaker 1: cockpit of a of an airliner knew that the pilot
Speaker 1: was doing something wrong and they were going to crash
Speaker 1: into a mountain. The pilot didn't seem to know, but
Speaker 1: they're polite, and so they indirectly keep telling the pilot
Speaker 1: you better change things up, but they don't say it directly.
Speaker 1: And if you listen to the black box recordings, those
Speaker 1: planes crash. Uh, So there's a there's a norm that we,
Speaker 1: uh try not to embarrass the other person. It's a
Speaker 1: very important norm for day to day life. Imagine day
Speaker 1: to day life without it. But it can go to
Speaker 1: extremes in terms of not telling pilots that, uh, they're
Speaker 1: on a course to disaster, or not telling doctors that
Speaker 1: they're operating on the wrong leg for example. Really, and
Speaker 1: so to me, that sounds a lot like just deferral
Speaker 1: to authority. How much of that is just being a
Speaker 1: good little soldier and how much of that is social norms?
Speaker 1: Were they you know, two sides of the same coin, Well,
Speaker 1: they're two sides of the same coin. I mean, we
Speaker 1: defer to authority, but we also defer to each other,
Speaker 1: and by and large sets there because it has an
Speaker 1: overall positive impact. But it can go too far. Um
Speaker 1: so uh. And the question becomes knowing when it's going
Speaker 1: too far and being able to break the norm. And
Speaker 1: what I find interesting though, is that norms permeate our life.
Speaker 1: For example, there are norms that we know that we
Speaker 1: don't know that we know. So, for example, just just
Speaker 1: give you a one example. We know it's a teenage
Speaker 1: ninja turtles as opposed to a teenage ninja to turtles
Speaker 1: as opposed to mutant ninja teenage turtles. That sounds odd.
Speaker 1: There's a rule in how you stack up adjectives before
Speaker 1: and now uh, and we all follow that rule and
Speaker 1: we know when that rules being violated, but we don't
Speaker 1: know that rule. But there are a lot of rules
Speaker 1: in our language, a lot of rules in our behavior,
Speaker 1: a lot of rules in our etiquette that we're following,
Speaker 1: but we're so skilled at them we don't know that
Speaker 1: we're following. We just internalize them and we're not aware
Speaker 1: of that. That's right, And so so how does that
Speaker 1: come back? How do you deal with that when you
Speaker 1: have a deferring co pilot and the pilots about to
Speaker 1: hit them out. You have to train people to have
Speaker 1: a different norm. So you just completely break the underlying
Speaker 1: norm and replace it with something for safety purposes. That's right.
Speaker 1: Either you invent a procedure or you invent a piece
Speaker 1: of equipment, so it's going to tell the pilot that
Speaker 1: they're in error, UM or a piece of equipment that
Speaker 1: prevents the error in the first place. So, for example,
Speaker 1: in terms of wrong side surgery, and this is a
Speaker 1: thing that can happen, but it happens much less than
Speaker 1: it used to basically because the medical profession has instituted
Speaker 1: procedures to just avoid the error another norm, if you will.
Speaker 1: So I remember when I had eye surgery. I'm having
Speaker 1: a pleasant conversation with the eye surgeon um beforehand, and
Speaker 1: at the end he has, oh, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: your right eye we're doing today, right, and uh, I
Speaker 1: go yes, And well he knew it was the right eye,
Speaker 1: but he had to check and then he signed, you know,
Speaker 1: the forehead and above my right just to make sure
Speaker 1: that to avoid wrong side surgery. So I'm just horrified
Speaker 1: at the thought that there's a room full of surgeons
Speaker 1: and someone starts sawing off the wrong leg and nobody
Speaker 1: says anything. Yes, well, because it is the case that
Speaker 1: people may be uncertain, they don't know how to intervene. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's the wrong leg. Not to be funny, but I'm
Speaker 1: it's just terrifying. Oh I know. But but remember this
Speaker 1: in some sense, it goes all the way back to
Speaker 1: the Pilgrim experiment. Uh. And the key about the Pilgrim
Speaker 1: experiment is not that people gleefully went all the way
Speaker 1: to shock another person and basically a commit involuntary manslaughter.
Speaker 1: That's what the moment experiment was. They didn't know how
Speaker 1: to get out. And what I'm intrigued by the film
Speaker 1: of the Milgram experiment, for example, is that the second thing, uh,
Speaker 1: the subjects tend to say when they're trying to get
Speaker 1: out is they say, you can have your four fifty back.
Speaker 1: That is that the social contract is a norm, it
Speaker 1: has to be followed, and they have to aggregate that
Speaker 1: contract before they can stop doing involuntary manslaughter essentially. But
Speaker 1: the real thing about that experiment is people don't know
Speaker 1: how to dissent. It's not something we're necessarily well trained
Speaker 1: in we're trained in cooperating, we are trained in deferring.
Speaker 1: That's not true all the time, but if you start
Speaker 1: looking around in life, you realize we do it a
Speaker 1: lot more than we think we're doing it. But we're
Speaker 1: not really well trained in the psychology of dissent um
Speaker 1: or the psych collogy of objection. That's just not something
Speaker 1: we do. So how much of this is institutional schools, family, whatever,
Speaker 1: and how much of this is biological? Hey, we're social
Speaker 1: primates and that's how we've evolved. I think it's it
Speaker 1: has to be both. Um. That is, both people and
Speaker 1: institutions evolved to create norms that do the best to
Speaker 1: make the day pleasant, survivable, to make the day efficient.
Speaker 1: And uh, it does have that. Norms do have that effect.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world in which we didn't have norms. Your
Speaker 1: enthusiast that that is a whole show about what happens
Speaker 1: if one person decides he's not going to pay attention
Speaker 1: to any of the social That's absolutely right, and it's
Speaker 1: incredibly entertaining, but I wouldn't want to live in it.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes difficult to watch. It just goes to show
Speaker 1: you how ingrain. Those norms are the not to not
Speaker 1: to become a television critic. But the first couple of
Speaker 1: seasons of that show, I remember having a pose it
Speaker 1: and just take a rake because it was so cringe
Speaker 1: worthy and so difficult and uncomfortable to watch, even as
Speaker 1: it was hilarious. Uh. I never really thought of it
Speaker 1: in terms of norms. You just think of him as
Speaker 1: a you know, cranky, difficult person. But I guess it's
Speaker 1: all norms. Well, it is all norms, And if there's
Speaker 1: a biology to it, it's that we are primed, uh
Speaker 1: to have anxiety mechanisms that are really ready to go
Speaker 1: when we're in a situation of of norm violation. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you're watching something on television separated from you.
Speaker 1: You know it's fictional, and yet you're feeling real emotion,
Speaker 1: and the emotion is exactly the emotion you feel around
Speaker 1: norm violations. It's anxiety, it's nervousness, its tension um. That's
Speaker 1: fascinating and potentially speaks to how powerful that mechanism is
Speaker 1: within the body, within the species um and why norms
Speaker 1: hopefully work in society. So before we get off this topic,
Speaker 1: I have to circle back to the Milgram experiment and
Speaker 1: an unrelated the marshmallow experiments as well, all these things
Speaker 1: that listen. I've been out of college for a hundred years,
Speaker 1: but the things that I read through in in college
Speaker 1: level psychology, I keep reading about different studies that they're
Speaker 1: going back and saying, well, maybe there was a false
Speaker 1: bias built into the way the test was done, and
Speaker 1: when we try and recreate this, we're not getting the
Speaker 1: same level of of effect. Is the Milgram experiment still
Speaker 1: the operative obedience to authority in the world of psychology
Speaker 1: or has that been rolled back a little bit? I
Speaker 1: think people are reevaluating it as we speak. I know
Speaker 1: there has been some journalism that's been antagonistic to the
Speaker 1: Milgram effects. So I've actually gone back because I teach
Speaker 1: this stuff in this specific case and read the journalism
Speaker 1: and going back to the original study, and I think
Speaker 1: the Milgram experiment itself is still solid. But you do
Speaker 1: have to go back in a case by case basis,
Speaker 1: because it is the case that UM a lot of
Speaker 1: classic work is being re evaluated, UH, and you really
Speaker 1: do have to go back and UM review the original work,
Speaker 1: and you have to review the replications or review the
Speaker 1: rethinking if you will, and case by case there are
Speaker 1: different issues that you really have to think through. So UM,
Speaker 1: in the case the mil group experiment, I think that's
Speaker 1: uh that solid. In the case of the marshmallow experiment,
Speaker 1: clearly the uh the um headline is still the same.
Speaker 1: Kids who wait a long time when they're young have
Speaker 1: different life outcomes when they're teenagers, and so on. Uh.
Speaker 1: The argument is over what exactly does that represent? Does
Speaker 1: that represent personality or does that represent social class? Does
Speaker 1: that represent whether or not what environment you grew up in? Uh?
Speaker 1: So the issue has changed depending on which specific topic
Speaker 1: you are reviewing. Quite interesting, you write about a lot
Speaker 1: of things beyond metacognition. You cover a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other areas. We haven't really talked about. Your book, which
Speaker 1: is a couple of years old already Self Insights, roadblocks
Speaker 1: and detours on the path to knowing thyself. There was
Speaker 1: something in the book that just cracked me up, which
Speaker 1: you don't normally get in an academic book. Um, you're special,
Speaker 1: and it turns out no, most of us are not special,
Speaker 1: and we are wholly unaware of that. We've been told
Speaker 1: most of our lives how special we are tell us
Speaker 1: why so few of us are actually special? Well, the
Speaker 1: problem is that, um, well, if you look at the
Speaker 1: complete person, each of us is special. But if you
Speaker 1: put us in any situation or any circumstance, we're most
Speaker 1: gonna mostly going to act like everybody else. Most of
Speaker 1: us are average. Most of us are average. Most of
Speaker 1: us are typical. I mean that in any specific circumstance.
Speaker 1: So if you argregate all that, all of who we
Speaker 1: are together, we yeah, we are special. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to specific situations, no, we're not special. And so
Speaker 1: what that does leave people with, though, is they people
Speaker 1: do have this idea that they are unique, that they
Speaker 1: are exceptional, and as a as a consequence, they can't
Speaker 1: I'm just doing the checkboxes, yep, right of course, Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: And so what that means is that it turns out
Speaker 1: people have a good rough understanding of human nature. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say it's perfect, that's my work, but
Speaker 1: they do have a good understanding of human nature. The
Speaker 1: mistake they make is that they think they stand outside
Speaker 1: that human nature, that they are different, they're special, that
Speaker 1: they're special. So, for example, we've done studies if we
Speaker 1: ask people, uh, there's going to be a a food
Speaker 1: drive at your campus. Let's say in a month, will
Speaker 1: you contribute to it? Um? And what percentage of people
Speaker 1: will contribute to it. They're pretty good at nailing the
Speaker 1: percentage of people on their campus are going to contribute
Speaker 1: to the food drive there. Rather, they sort of figure
Speaker 1: what the situation is, they can think about their experience.
Speaker 1: They come up with a good answer. Uh, and that
Speaker 1: answer turns out to be right. But when we ask them, okay,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Are you going to contribute?
Speaker 1: They way overestimate how much they're going to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. They're going to do the good thing. They're
Speaker 1: going to do the social thing, basically because they understand
Speaker 1: how the situation and external forces will prompt people to
Speaker 1: donate and to not donate, but they think they stand
Speaker 1: outside those forces. For them, it's just simply a decision
Speaker 1: do I want to donate or not? And a lot
Speaker 1: of people want to donate, so yeah, I'm going to donate.
Speaker 1: It turns out when the time comes, no, there's subject
Speaker 1: to all these external forces that push against donation as
Speaker 1: well as push forward donation. So they turn out to
Speaker 1: be typical just like everybody else. So let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about a related topic. UM. Again from the book about
Speaker 1: Moral Fortitude. You tell the the story about being on
Speaker 1: radio show UM around the time of the Clinton impeachment,
Speaker 1: almost a Trump impeachment. But this is this is funny.
Speaker 1: Plus years ago, the radio host goes off on a
Speaker 1: tirade about infidelity and the moral inferiority and failings of
Speaker 1: other people. And you had at your fingertips a bunch
Speaker 1: of research about how everybody's expectations of their own moral
Speaker 1: superiority sort of fit into the Dunning Kruger framework. We
Speaker 1: think we're much better at that than we really are. Well,
Speaker 1: that's true. That is because when you move to the
Speaker 1: moral domain the ethical domain, UH, people definitely have this
Speaker 1: folier than thou attitude. I won't do it, but other
Speaker 1: people will do it if it's bad. For example, I
Speaker 1: would never cheat on my beloved, but other people, of course,
Speaker 1: they're gonna cheat in their beloved. Um. And it turns
Speaker 1: out we did a number of studies not an infidelity
Speaker 1: but rather will you vote, uh, will be charitable? Will
Speaker 1: you will tread? Will you obey traffic laws? For example?
Speaker 1: And it turns out that people widely overestimate themselves that
Speaker 1: is a overestimate how moral, ethical, and good they will
Speaker 1: be relative to what they think about other people. And
Speaker 1: they also overestimate how moral and good they're going to
Speaker 1: be relative to the reality when we actually test either
Speaker 1: them or equivalent group of people. So, um, the question
Speaker 1: for us is people tendably they're morally superior. Are they
Speaker 1: making a mistake about other people? Are they being too
Speaker 1: cynical about other people? Are they being too optimistic about
Speaker 1: the self? And it turns out to be to my surprise,
Speaker 1: and this is completely the reverse of what I expected.
Speaker 1: People are wrong about themselves exactly because they think they're special. Huh.
Speaker 1: But so so, they're not being cynical about the rest
Speaker 1: of humanity. They pretty much have them naw, they just
Speaker 1: think they're better than everybody. That's right. With maybe one
Speaker 1: or two glaring exceptions, people are surprisingly accurate about the
Speaker 1: general rate about human nature in general, how other people
Speaker 1: are gonna be buffeted around by external forces. They just
Speaker 1: think they're for themselves are exempt from those forces, all right.
Speaker 1: So we have metic cognition issues when we're trying to
Speaker 1: do a specific task that requires skills. There's a similar
Speaker 1: issue with our own sense of self and ethics and
Speaker 1: moral turpitude. Um, what other areas are subject to the
Speaker 1: Dunning Kruger effect. Well, I don't know what else there
Speaker 1: might be, but is that everything is it thoughts in
Speaker 1: action and everything else has left over? No, there's also
Speaker 1: the future if you think so. People are also over
Speaker 1: optimistic about their prospects if you will really, oh absolutely, Uh.
Speaker 1: That is, people really underestimate how long it's going to
Speaker 1: take to complete projects. Uh, the underestimate or how long
Speaker 1: it's going to take for their business to be profitable. Uh.
Speaker 1: They when they're thinking about the future, they tend to
Speaker 1: base their planning and their ideas on the most optimistic
Speaker 1: scenario rather than the most pessimistic scenario area, or maybe
Speaker 1: even the most realistic scenario. So, um, there are things
Speaker 1: we missed, not only in terms of competence and character,
Speaker 1: but also about our prospects. So how do we explain that?
Speaker 1: I can imagine I could concoct a lovely narrative tale
Speaker 1: as to why having an optimism bias is good for
Speaker 1: the species. Even if you're the guy from Cave seventy
Speaker 1: three that doesn't come back from the mammoth aunt, everybody
Speaker 1: else has foreign meat for the winter. Is this just
Speaker 1: a crazy narrative story or is there some evolutionary component
Speaker 1: to us Well, there is an evolutionary component to it
Speaker 1: and an adaptability component to it, but it's complicated. So
Speaker 1: the fact that people commit to things far too optimistically
Speaker 1: really does create those things. I mean, books are written, um,
Speaker 1: Businesses are developed. Um. Uh, movies are made, even though
Speaker 1: the people who start them out did far more work
Speaker 1: and are now far more depressed and tired than they
Speaker 1: ever imagined they would be at the end of those projects.
Speaker 1: But um, if they had only been prepared for how
Speaker 1: long it was going to take, they probably would have
Speaker 1: come up with a better project, a better business, and
Speaker 1: a better book. Uh. So things get made, but people
Speaker 1: will fail or they won't produce really what they're capable
Speaker 1: of producing. Very interesting, all of which leads to one
Speaker 1: big question, which is why do we seem to make
Speaker 1: these same errors in judgment? Is it's something about the
Speaker 1: way we learn? Is it something about our fragile egos?
Speaker 1: Why as a species are we unable to get by
Speaker 1: some of these fairly obvious flaws. Well, I think there
Speaker 1: are two things involved. One comes from the holier than
Speaker 1: that work, which is for overweighting our intentions and the
Speaker 1: part of our personality to produce things that that's part
Speaker 1: of what's going on when we repeat that, the power
Speaker 1: of our personality to because well, I will do this,
Speaker 1: because I want to do this, uh and I uh,
Speaker 1: that is part. Uh, that's something that we overestimate. The
Speaker 1: other is the competence angle, which is we really don't
Speaker 1: know what we don't know and RUMs felt unknown unknowns? Well,
Speaker 1: the world is filled with unknown unknowns and uh, and
Speaker 1: we don't know well, not only do we not know them,
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to the fact we don't know them.
Speaker 1: I mean too many people out there. The idea of
Speaker 1: unknown unknowns is still a novel concept, but it is
Speaker 1: something that they don't know what they don't know. But
Speaker 1: there is a lot of work showing that people just
Speaker 1: don't pay attention to what they don't know when they're
Speaker 1: making predictions or when they're planning things out. They don't
Speaker 1: sit back and ask, Okay, what is it that I
Speaker 1: don't know here? What's still open? What are the possibilities
Speaker 1: that I'm not considering? Not only that, am I concerning
Speaker 1: the fact that there are unknown unknowns and I should
Speaker 1: be planning for that possibility. So you mentioned earlier planning.
Speaker 1: I saw something kind of interesting around January nine of
Speaker 1: this year. That's the date when most people's New Year's
Speaker 1: resolutions fail. Does that sound remotely plausible or is that
Speaker 1: just um something else from the internet. I'm surprised that
Speaker 1: our resolutions last that long. Oh really, no kidding. So
Speaker 1: so why that raises the next question? If we have
Speaker 1: all the best intentions and we want to fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks, stop smoking, exercise, uh, lose weight, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: why is it that when we make these sorts of plans,
Speaker 1: all as a group on the same date every year,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine why would that not work? Well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work because the world is waiting for us in
Speaker 1: some sense. It does have those unknown unknowns, and it
Speaker 1: does have external forces that are going to defeat us.
Speaker 1: And what we tend to do is we tend to
Speaker 1: focus on our plans. What am I going to do,
Speaker 1: What are my intentions, what are the steps that I'm
Speaker 1: going to take. What we really should do is interview
Speaker 1: people who tried to do this before and find out
Speaker 1: what the real difficulties are. They're gonna be many difficulties
Speaker 1: that we haven't anticipated they're gonna be many difficulties that
Speaker 1: we don't know about. Um. Uh. And not only that,
Speaker 1: there are probably tricks, strategies to tactics, plans that we
Speaker 1: can make that we wouldn't think of, but someone else
Speaker 1: has thought of them and they actually work. So if
Speaker 1: we actually consulted with people who have traveled the road
Speaker 1: before us, we would do a much better job, I think,
Speaker 1: anticipating the difficulties we have lined ahead, as well as
Speaker 1: being better armed with strategies that have a better chance
Speaker 1: of success. All right, so let me push back on
Speaker 1: that a little bit. The dieting industry is like a
Speaker 1: twenty six billion dollar sector of the economy, and they
Speaker 1: all have the magic UM bullet, and yet everybody in
Speaker 1: this country seems to be increasingly overweight. Um. Diabetes is
Speaker 1: a problem. There are all these weight related issues. If
Speaker 1: we could speak to other people well and have that
Speaker 1: conversation who have been successful, how does that work given
Speaker 1: the vast numbers of people, um who need assistance losing weight? Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a very good question, by the way. Evolutionarily, this
Speaker 1: is a very novel task for because having extra weight
Speaker 1: is a good survival thing. If you have a shorter lifespan.
Speaker 1: We now live beyond that adaptation. I don't think cholesterol
Speaker 1: was a big problem ten years ago. I think that's right,
Speaker 1: and it probably wasn't a big problem even up to
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago. I mean, getting calories was up
Speaker 1: to very very recently. So as a species, we are
Speaker 1: dealing with a very novel task in trying to lose weight.
Speaker 1: I think that there are some common sense things that
Speaker 1: people can do, um. But one of the things they
Speaker 1: can do is reset two things. The first is what's
Speaker 1: a realistic outcome in terms of losing weight? But also
Speaker 1: so um having more realism in terms of how much
Speaker 1: effort uh and how much time it is going to
Speaker 1: take to get there, for example, uh, and also being
Speaker 1: to think things more in terms of long term as
Speaker 1: opposed to the short term. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: people think, how do I lose weight this month? No,
Speaker 1: the question is how do you keep the weight? How
Speaker 1: do you lose weight and keep the weight off for
Speaker 1: years and years and years um. But I think as
Speaker 1: certainly as a society, I think it's taking a while
Speaker 1: for the collective wisdom to form because it does turn
Speaker 1: out to be a particularly difficult task. So my I
Speaker 1: go for an annual physical every year. My GP is
Speaker 1: also a cardiologist, and he's one of these old school doctors.
Speaker 1: When they're done with the tests, you go into their office,
Speaker 1: you sit down and you have a conversation and when
Speaker 1: you go through everything, it's all good. And he says,
Speaker 1: you have any questions for me? I'm like, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: like to drop a few pounds. What do you suggests?
Speaker 1: And he very conspiratorially looked over each shoulder and then
Speaker 1: lean forward and whispered to me, eat less food. And UM,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Doc, you know this a giant industry whose
Speaker 1: whole purpose is to not share that advice, but it
Speaker 1: turns out to be good advice. Yes, so eating a
Speaker 1: little less food you can lose some weight. It's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's quite fascinating, and yet it's hard to do than
Speaker 1: you would imagine. Then I certainly, then I imagine, No,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Well, certainly in the United States
Speaker 1: it's harder. Um. One of think that I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: Now this isn't psychologist, it's just my personal life is
Speaker 1: every so often I spend time in Germany and I
Speaker 1: always lose weight in Germany. Without even trying. Now, why
Speaker 1: is that? Do you not like bratt worstern beer or uh? Well,
Speaker 1: German cuisine is more than that, not much more, by
Speaker 1: the way, but it is more than that. But uh
Speaker 1: it's a lot of schnitzel when you don't know anything else.
Speaker 1: That's a safe choice. It's a safe choice. But I
Speaker 1: think most uh, well, in Germany the portions are small.
Speaker 1: In the rest of the world, the portions are small.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and that's an issue. Most of the
Speaker 1: calories in the meal are conveyed by the sauce, in
Speaker 1: the in the inevitable beer you're going to drink, or
Speaker 1: the wine you're going to drink. But there's also just
Speaker 1: a much more walking. Oh really, bike riding? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: can you walk off that many calories? I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're Michael Phelps, sure, But for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: we're not putting in three hours a day of sweating. Well,
Speaker 1: that's certainly true. But if you just walk, and walking
Speaker 1: is one physical act our species was built for, h
Speaker 1: it does bring things under control. Um, this isn't scientific.
Speaker 1: I just know my brother lost quite a bit of
Speaker 1: weight by buying a beagle and then taking the beagle
Speaker 1: out for eight to nine mile walks every weekend and UH.
Speaker 1: That worked for him. UH. And so there are strategies
Speaker 1: that work. Maybe different strategies work for different people. UM.
Speaker 1: But the key is often UM. What we will tend
Speaker 1: to do is will tend to try to solve the
Speaker 1: question ourselves, using only ourselves as the source of knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's good to consult, It's good to find out who's
Speaker 1: had a success. It's good to confer with other people.
Speaker 1: That can only broaden the knowledge and the wisdom that
Speaker 1: we have UM at our disposal whenever we have a
Speaker 1: difficult task like losing weight. And I gotta ask why
Speaker 1: you In Germany each year I have a collaboration there
Speaker 1: in Cologne with a couple of researchers doing work on trust.
Speaker 1: This is where the interest in norms comes in. UH.
Speaker 1: And that's been going on for many, many years. And
Speaker 1: there have been many many meals during the course of
Speaker 1: that collaboration, and much weight has been lost funding over there. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I have a bunch more questions, including some on trust.
Speaker 1: Can you stick around a few surements? We have been
Speaker 1: speaking with David Dunning, professor of psychology at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure
Speaker 1: and stick around and check out our podcast Astras, where
Speaker 1: we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things
Speaker 1: psychology related. You can find in that on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: wherever your final podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my weekly column on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Rid Halts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Master some
Speaker 1: Business on Bloomberg Radio Professor Donny. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what to call you, David. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. I have been looking forward to this for
Speaker 1: a long time. And there I have all these formal
Speaker 1: questions and we kind of work our way through that
Speaker 1: that's my crutch. But I have all these other questions
Speaker 1: that that I've been dying to ask you, and and
Speaker 1: the big one was on that chart which you surprised
Speaker 1: me with. I didn't realize you guys had hadn't created
Speaker 1: that and that only in did you end up validating
Speaker 1: with the Internet intuitive about your work. So that's fast
Speaker 1: and nating the thing that intrigues me so much. Why
Speaker 1: why is it that the way we learn is to
Speaker 1: start from zero, assume we have knowledge that we don't
Speaker 1: and then build on that, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: there's an insight and we realize, oh, we are idiots,
Speaker 1: we don't know half of what we're talking about. And
Speaker 1: from from that broken down position, are we able to
Speaker 1: rebuild some true confidence relative to skills versus the false confidence?
Speaker 1: And so the big question is what is it about
Speaker 1: the species that has this inherit in it? Because it
Speaker 1: seems to cause wide spread problems across society. Well, two things.
Speaker 1: I mean, let me start off with the things we
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to. We don't pay attention to
Speaker 1: what we don't know. We've already talked about that. And
Speaker 1: we also do pay attention to luck and its potential
Speaker 1: role success and failure, uh, for example, So we set
Speaker 1: that aside. Um. Where this comes from in terms of
Speaker 1: we think we've got this is that actually, in many
Speaker 1: situations we start from zero and we do get it.
Speaker 1: That is um. Uh, every situation we face in one
Speaker 1: way or another. This interview, for example, is a new situation.
Speaker 1: It does it doesn't exactly replicate the past. It's unique,
Speaker 1: and our brain is able to fetch a lot of
Speaker 1: little elements of knowledge from everywhere to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is this, how do I deal with this? What's
Speaker 1: the next move? I mean, the genius of our brain
Speaker 1: is taking something novel and coming to an understanding of it.
Speaker 1: This is similar enough to that that I could use
Speaker 1: what I learned last time to work my way through.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, and that's essential for the species to survive.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you know that skill is going to derail,
Speaker 1: it's going to lead us to something that's absolutely wrong. Uh.
Speaker 1: But it will look exactly right. That is, it will
Speaker 1: look like all the experiences where it was novel. We
Speaker 1: figured out what was going on, We figured out what
Speaker 1: we should do. So for example, if you have a
Speaker 1: friend who's drowning in the lake, you're on the dock
Speaker 1: and next and you don't have life reservers, but you
Speaker 1: do have a basketball and a bowling ball next to you.
Speaker 1: You know which ball to throw them, depending on how
Speaker 1: much you like him exactly. Um. We we can innovate. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's what we were built to do. The
Speaker 1: problem is those innovations may become misapplied. And that's where
Speaker 1: the Dunning Krueger effect comes in. We've um worked from
Speaker 1: this genius, we've worked from this amazing database we have
Speaker 1: in our squishy little organic driver in our server in
Speaker 1: our head and um, but we've misapplied and we don't
Speaker 1: realize that until well after the disaster has happened, So
Speaker 1: we're not aware of. What we don't know are blind
Speaker 1: spots where we underestimate luck. And I've seen some ridings
Speaker 1: that's a when we're successful, we credited to our own
Speaker 1: skill and when we're unsuccessful, we credited to bad luck.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but with the we do the
Speaker 1: opposite with other people when they're successful while they got lucky,
Speaker 1: and when they're unsuccessful it's because they're not very skillful.
Speaker 1: That sort of back to the I'm special thing that
Speaker 1: seems to permeate everything, doesn't it It does, and that
Speaker 1: it's exactly the I'm special thing. But one thing I
Speaker 1: should mention though, is the I'm special thing, though might
Speaker 1: be constrained in other parts of the globe, is still
Speaker 1: could be cultural. Oh there's a cultural element, no doubt.
Speaker 1: We've actually studied that that this is something that attaches
Speaker 1: much more to people with a heritage it's American as Canadian,
Speaker 1: that's Western European. If you're coming from uh an Eastern culture, Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't do um as much or at all, this
Speaker 1: overestimation of self for this I'm special stuff that you'll
Speaker 1: find Americans do all the time. Huh. And now I
Speaker 1: would imagine in China, where there's a billion plus people,
Speaker 1: it's harder to just assume you're special or is that
Speaker 1: not even relevant? It's cultural more than anything. Well, it's
Speaker 1: cultural in the sense of is the emphasis on me
Speaker 1: and what I can do and what can I impose
Speaker 1: upon the world that's very Western as opposed to how
Speaker 1: do I fit in? How do I harmonize? How do
Speaker 1: I fulfill the role that I've been assigned or the
Speaker 1: role that I've fallen into, and that's much more Eastern.
Speaker 1: And you're just gonna have a very different way of
Speaker 1: thinking if you're in the first culture as opposed to
Speaker 1: second culture. So so you earlier we were talking about
Speaker 1: trust um and I'm kind of intrigued by that. There
Speaker 1: there's a question that is, I guess, sort of obvious.
Speaker 1: Why do we trust strangers? Why are we so susceptible
Speaker 1: to being defrauded or scammed. It seems that every other
Speaker 1: day I'm reading about some different Ponzi scheme or some
Speaker 1: different um insanity where people trusted someone they clearly shouldn't
Speaker 1: and it got them into a lot of trouble. I
Speaker 1: think that comes from the fact we took what we
Speaker 1: talked about norms earlier. And one of the norms we
Speaker 1: have that goes right down deep in the heart of
Speaker 1: what it means to have a conversation is we assume
Speaker 1: what the other person is telling us is true unless
Speaker 1: there is evidence otherwise. But the assumption is truth. That's
Speaker 1: the presumption that we have, and that makes sense. Imagine
Speaker 1: a world in which I are we all distrusted what
Speaker 1: the other person is telling us, there would not be
Speaker 1: much coordination going on in the world. Um. So, if
Speaker 1: you ask for directions, the person tells you how to
Speaker 1: get to the Bloomberg building, you assume they're telling you
Speaker 1: the truth, because imagine if you said, no, I don't
Speaker 1: trust them, what are you gonna do? So do you
Speaker 1: even ask them in the first place? Exactly, So, there
Speaker 1: is a normal presumption of truth. Uh. That serves us
Speaker 1: well for the most part in life. But um, if
Speaker 1: the other person is malevolent. If the other person is incompetent,
Speaker 1: that presumption is going to lead to potential folly, for example.
Speaker 1: But we we do have actually ongoing work looking at
Speaker 1: people's ability to tell uh true science headlines from fake
Speaker 1: science headlines. And what's interesting to us is that, um,
Speaker 1: uh the error people tend to make is they tend
Speaker 1: to believe fake things are true. They make that error
Speaker 1: much more they do the reverse error, thinking a true
Speaker 1: thing is fake. So in general, people are gullible, so
Speaker 1: to speak. What's interesting though, is you ask people this
Speaker 1: is one of the rare areas for people. Uh. They
Speaker 1: don't say, oh, I have no bias, I see it
Speaker 1: the way it is. Rather what they they say, they
Speaker 1: do have a bias. They're too skeptical. Uh, they're too
Speaker 1: wary of information out there. They're more likely to uh
Speaker 1: distrust a true thing than to accept a false thing.
Speaker 1: So this is the first time I've ever seen something
Speaker 1: a bias with the superpower that is, most people are gullible,
Speaker 1: but they actually believe they have the reverse bias, that
Speaker 1: they're too skeptical. But it all comes from uh, from
Speaker 1: a norm if you will, that for the most part
Speaker 1: in life, and day to day living. It works. It
Speaker 1: makes UH life eminently easier if we assume what the
Speaker 1: other person's telling us is true, because at the very
Speaker 1: least what the other person is telling us is sincere right.
Speaker 1: That that's quite interesting. I'm surprised, in this era of
Speaker 1: misinformation and all the false memes all over the Internet
Speaker 1: that people still think their problem is Well, I'm too skeptical.
Speaker 1: It's clear, at least from the popular culture, that we
Speaker 1: too easily believe things we shouldn't. Oh, that's absolutely right, UH,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit we don't exactly have a
Speaker 1: handle on why do people think the reverse? That's fascinating
Speaker 1: And once again it's one of those UH findings we
Speaker 1: get where I look at it and I go, I
Speaker 1: have no idea why this is happening. That happens far
Speaker 1: too often in my work. So what about nudges? Is
Speaker 1: there a way to to and I'm referencing uh on
Speaker 1: Stein and failures UM work on on small, little systemic
Speaker 1: ways to steer people in the right direction. Is that
Speaker 1: something that can help people make better decisions? Or are
Speaker 1: we just left to our own faulty devices. Well, our
Speaker 1: devices are always going to be somewhat faulty, but we
Speaker 1: can reduce the fault if you will. We can never
Speaker 1: be perfect, but we can reduce our vulnerability. And for example,
Speaker 1: we talked about gullibility. Uh. There are a number of
Speaker 1: UM resources that are being developed on the Internet even
Speaker 1: as we speak that are focused on how do we
Speaker 1: get people to better evaluate what they're hearing over the internet,
Speaker 1: And just to go over what the key movie is
Speaker 1: is that typically what people do is when they see
Speaker 1: something that's a provocative headline, for example, they look at
Speaker 1: the website and try to figure out, just based on
Speaker 1: that headline and the website it's designed itself, is this
Speaker 1: something that I can believe? And so if it has
Speaker 1: a Stasi professional picture for example, they decide it must
Speaker 1: be more believable. Um, that's not the way to decide
Speaker 1: whether or not something that's true or not. Instead of
Speaker 1: internal reading, what you have to do is something that
Speaker 1: all fact checkers know, which is you have to do
Speaker 1: lateral reading. You have to go to other sources. You
Speaker 1: have to go to other people once again and find
Speaker 1: out other other sources saying the same thing. Is there
Speaker 1: any comment on the reliability of the source you're looking
Speaker 1: at now? From from other places. Uh am I looking
Speaker 1: at something mainstream or looking at something that's made up. Um,
Speaker 1: what people have to become is a little bit more
Speaker 1: like a journalist. And what journalists do and what fact
Speaker 1: checkers do is they check from multiple sources. They go
Speaker 1: to other sources to take a look at whether this
Speaker 1: piece of information is one that I can rely on.
Speaker 1: And so in terms of nudges, there there are thematic judges, uh,
Speaker 1: nudges like uh, the lateral reading. Uh. But there are
Speaker 1: also more specific things now that are popping up on
Speaker 1: the Internet that can be quite helpful, at least in
Speaker 1: this on this issue. That's quite intriguing. Although I guess
Speaker 1: you could do the same thing with the deep fakes
Speaker 1: that are coming out. Some of the videos are really
Speaker 1: horrifying because they just look so real. How can you
Speaker 1: do a lateral check and find out if something like
Speaker 1: that is real? Well, uh, I actually do this, actually
Speaker 1: google and see if anybody else has basically said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is a deep fake basically, so uh, you can't
Speaker 1: tell from from the video itself because you are incredibly good.
Speaker 1: Now you really have to go to other sources and
Speaker 1: find out what the other sources are saying so, and
Speaker 1: often what you find. For example, if you do that,
Speaker 1: you'll find out this video tape was created by such
Speaker 1: and such, or this video tape actually comes from some
Speaker 1: other incident has nothing to do with what's going on here.
Speaker 1: But basically, uh, in terms of dealing with misinformation, I think,
Speaker 1: either whether we're talking about students in school, whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about adults, the thing we have to do is
Speaker 1: learn a little journalism. By the way, just quick, other
Speaker 1: countries have actually gone this route in a big way.
Speaker 1: So Finland, because it's right next to Russia and it's
Speaker 1: been at a cool war with Russia for the last
Speaker 1: hundred years, knows that Russian disinformation is coming over. And
Speaker 1: so they're actually training students and training adults about how
Speaker 1: to tell fake from real, you know, in an intensive way.
Speaker 1: Um that, well, we could borrow a few of their techniques.
Speaker 1: Quite quite interesting. There was something else in the book
Speaker 1: I had to ask you about. What is anna so
Speaker 1: nosa and as ignosia. I don't know if I pronounced
Speaker 1: that right, but neither do I certainly have no I
Speaker 1: know that I have no idea. If I pronounced that right,
Speaker 1: I could barely spit it out that's true. But but
Speaker 1: I have enough to think I know, and I really
Speaker 1: haven't checked in a while to figure out if I
Speaker 1: really know how to announced that well. As Egnosia is
Speaker 1: actually a term that comes from um medicine and has
Speaker 1: to do with issues where because of brain injury, people
Speaker 1: are paralyzed but don't know that they're paralyzed. So oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So for example, if you if a person is paralyzed, um,
Speaker 1: I believe it's the left arm, and put a cup
Speaker 1: of water in front of them and say, okay, pick
Speaker 1: up the cup. Well, the person can't move their arm.
Speaker 1: They're paralyzed. I can't move their arm. But if you
Speaker 1: ask the person, whey aren't they picking up the cup,
Speaker 1: they may say something like I'm not thirsty, why would
Speaker 1: I want to pick up the cup? That is, they
Speaker 1: have no awareness. Yeah, sort of like the split brain experiments.
Speaker 1: Well it's flit brain experts are exactly that, where the
Speaker 1: one side of the brain can point to the right object,
Speaker 1: but that's not the side of the brain that controls
Speaker 1: um uh talking, that controls verbal skills. But if you
Speaker 1: ask the person why did you point to that, they
Speaker 1: can come up with something that is that's part of
Speaker 1: Our brain is very good at interpreting how to understand
Speaker 1: novel situations, so we can come up with justifications. We
Speaker 1: can come up with rash now is for why we
Speaker 1: do what we do quite easily. Our brain is an
Speaker 1: incredible storyteller, um, But you know, incredible storytellers sometimes tell fiction,
Speaker 1: and our brain is quite good at coming up with
Speaker 1: fiction at times. That's quite interesting. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: were going to go. Where are you going to go with? Um?
Speaker 1: The idea of of that injury and paralysis, it started
Speaker 1: to remind me a little bit of the aphasias where
Speaker 1: people lose the ability to speak but they could sing,
Speaker 1: or they can't write, but they could still read. And
Speaker 1: it seems like there's almost a very specific part of
Speaker 1: the brain that performs very specific functions, and if it's injured,
Speaker 1: everything else related still works. Just that one skill seems
Speaker 1: to go away. That's right. But the issue with a
Speaker 1: lot of physical maladies and our work can be thought
Speaker 1: of as ataphorical extension of that too intellectual capabilities. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know the physical melodies that they've got,
Speaker 1: So as people become hard of hearing, they often don't
Speaker 1: know that they're becoming hard of hearing, and so they
Speaker 1: wonder why everybody's mumbling. For example, a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are color blind, I don't know their color blindly
Speaker 1: because they've never not been color blind. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I thought you would order, like, when you look at
Speaker 1: a stop light, you can see what are people talking about?
Speaker 1: With red lights and green lights, they all look great
Speaker 1: at me. Does that not register or is that apparently
Speaker 1: not because you have you've never experienced fred or you've
Speaker 1: never experienced green, so you don't know what you're missing.
Speaker 1: When you mentioned everybody's mumbling. When I turned fifty, I
Speaker 1: remember having this is absolutely true. Had a conversation with
Speaker 1: my wife. I was sitting at the breakfast table one
Speaker 1: Sunday and I said, don't know what's going on with
Speaker 1: the New York Times, but they're using some cheaper paper.
Speaker 1: Look how fuzzy the words are. And then I said,
Speaker 1: look the Wall Street General. It's the same thing. And
Speaker 1: my wife says it it You need glasses and I'm like, what, No, No,
Speaker 1: I have perfect vision. She hands me her glasses and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I had no idea. My vision had
Speaker 1: decayed so much at the ripled age of fifty one
Speaker 1: UM some years ago, and it's that exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: You have no idea that the gradual decay is taking place.
Speaker 1: So so what else are you working on? Your Your
Speaker 1: field of study has very much um evolved since the
Speaker 1: original Dunning Krueger work. What else are you looking at
Speaker 1: these days? A related idea that we've been looking at
Speaker 1: quite a bit is this idea of hypocognition hypo hypo cognition. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the best way to explain it is, if you
Speaker 1: don't know what hypocognition is, congratulations, you've just experienced. Hypo
Speaker 1: Hypocognition is not having a concept if you will, so um,
Speaker 1: not having the idea of unknown unknowns. In the finance,
Speaker 1: a lot of people invest, but they don't really have
Speaker 1: the concept of exponential growth or compound interest. Your compounding
Speaker 1: is most probability and statistical things are very counterintuitive. People
Speaker 1: just can't wrap their head around it. And when you
Speaker 1: show people compounding charts, they're very often incredulous, incredulous that, wait,
Speaker 1: this much money can't I had a whole discussion about
Speaker 1: the number of four oh one k millionaires and the
Speaker 1: person said, well, maybe years ago, but you couldn't do
Speaker 1: that now? Why can't you do that now? It's these
Speaker 1: still got however many years it is, and here's what
Speaker 1: you're expected. Returns are over forty years. Oh and ps,
Speaker 1: your contribution levels are are up. It's easier today than
Speaker 1: it was years ago. That's right. But if you don't
Speaker 1: have the concept what what you are talking about seems alien, foreign,
Speaker 1: or a little bit of a con Uh So, But
Speaker 1: we're studying that in number of ways because we're interested.
Speaker 1: For example, what if people don't have a concept of
Speaker 1: scientific rigor they don't know all the rules that I
Speaker 1: have to live under, for example, to verify or make
Speaker 1: the case for any sort of conclusion that I want
Speaker 1: to reach. And that turns out to be related to uh,
Speaker 1: two perceptions out there in the world. The first perception
Speaker 1: is scientists can say whatever they want. Is that a
Speaker 1: real perception that people really think? Uh? Not a majority,
Speaker 1: but a clear percentage of people believe that. Is that
Speaker 1: specific to this country or is that global that I
Speaker 1: don't know, I've only studied it within this country. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also related, by the way to distrusted science
Speaker 1: that you just you don't have to listen to scientists
Speaker 1: what they have to say, really isn't useful? Um, and
Speaker 1: that it all does trace back in part but an
Speaker 1: important part to not knowing that how much work it
Speaker 1: is to reduce a piece of scientific knowledge. You don't
Speaker 1: have the idea of control condition, random assignment. I can
Speaker 1: go on it on, you can't cherry pick. Uh. People
Speaker 1: don't know these rules, and as a consequence, they think
Speaker 1: scientists are just some uh professors in their office dreaming
Speaker 1: up a conclusion and then collecting some data to window
Speaker 1: dress it, for example. And yet we use technology to
Speaker 1: such a great deal. Do do people think these are like, oh,
Speaker 1: look a magic box that I can speak to people
Speaker 1: on it's magic? Do they not get technology and engineering
Speaker 1: is based on fundamental science? I mean that seems pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: If science doesn't work, then how could you fly on
Speaker 1: a plane, How could you take medicine? How could you
Speaker 1: use you know, there's we get into an elevator at
Speaker 1: least in cities every day. Is it a magic box
Speaker 1: or is there science behind it? It just it seems
Speaker 1: so hard to accept that people are really science skeptical.
Speaker 1: I well, I agree, but I assure you that that
Speaker 1: percentage of people does exist. How what percentage of people
Speaker 1: that you study are truly science skeptics. Well, we're not
Speaker 1: using representative samples, but in the same calls we get
Speaker 1: and they're actually a better educated than than the average American.
Speaker 1: It's about let's say, I, but I can't I I
Speaker 1: don't know what the real percentage is because I haven't
Speaker 1: done anything that's a good representative snapshot, let's say in
Speaker 1: the United States. But you have to understand that a
Speaker 1: lot of people, I mean, the ignorance of the scientific
Speaker 1: method runs so deep that a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand that scientists collect data. They don't understand that that's so,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the process, and that data have the
Speaker 1: final authority and what you're able to conclude and what
Speaker 1: you're able to say, it just doesn't appear to them.
Speaker 1: So if you ask um students, let's say in college,
Speaker 1: are in high school, do they believe in oxygen or
Speaker 1: do they believe in the in the electron? They'll go yes, yes,
Speaker 1: why And they don't cite an experiment, they don't cite data. Uh,
Speaker 1: they basically say, that's what everybody says, that's what my
Speaker 1: teacher says, that's what my parents say. So for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, Um, the idea of data is not
Speaker 1: what they think about. They're basing their beliefs and what
Speaker 1: other people say, by the way, which is the same
Speaker 1: basis they use to believe in things like reincarnation or
Speaker 1: ghosts or karma. That is the basis for people's scientific
Speaker 1: beliefs tends to be the same as the basis of
Speaker 1: their supernatural beliefs. So it's just whatever the societal consensus is.
Speaker 1: They're acceptance. It's social proof, that's exactly. And and you
Speaker 1: know the one clapp question before I get to my
Speaker 1: favorite question. One thing I wanted to ask you earlier
Speaker 1: but for didn't get to was was comes back to
Speaker 1: paper blowing up and becoming so popular. After that happens,
Speaker 1: how did that affect your subsequent research? Did it affect
Speaker 1: the topics you pick? That did affect the options you
Speaker 1: had available? Like, what did what did this paper blowing
Speaker 1: up due to your subsequent research? Well, for many years,
Speaker 1: it didn't do anything because it was known, but the
Speaker 1: Internet wasn't fully in place yet, it wasn't a thing yet.
Speaker 1: I think that's happened far much more recently. So I
Speaker 1: went off and studied whatever I studied, But then the
Speaker 1: world sort of told me, no, we want you to
Speaker 1: look at this. Uh. And that's okay, because this was
Speaker 1: always the paper I didn't know how to follow up. Yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: so you have follow up. What else came out of
Speaker 1: this paper? Oh? A number of things have come out
Speaker 1: of this paper. So the question is when are people
Speaker 1: most vulnerable the Dunning Kruger effect? Um? Uh? And the
Speaker 1: answer is when they have an answer, when they believe
Speaker 1: they have expertise or they can spin a yard if
Speaker 1: you will. I mean there are times when you just
Speaker 1: simply cannot come up with an answer and you know
Speaker 1: that you don't know. Uh, you know when you're guessing.
Speaker 1: And that's some recent work uh we now have under review.
Speaker 1: It shows that people know when they're guessing. The problem
Speaker 1: the Dunning Kruger effect is when you don't think you're guessing, um,
Speaker 1: and coming up with a wrong answer. Uh. It's led
Speaker 1: to this work on hypocognition. It's led to this work
Speaker 1: on gullibility. We're now looking at do people know when
Speaker 1: they really need to ask for advice? That's an important consequence.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these questions really weren't formed in
Speaker 1: my head until I started interacting with people like you,
Speaker 1: or reporters or people in the airport, for example, are
Speaker 1: people randomly stopping you to ask Dunning Krueger questions? Well,
Speaker 1: it has happened. I mean, there's no escaping the baggage carousel.
Speaker 1: You're a prisoner over there? Well no, well, uh, luckily
Speaker 1: no one can see my little label on the on
Speaker 1: the luggage. But if my name gets called, you know,
Speaker 1: to get a seat assignment or whatever something like that,
Speaker 1: occasionally prison come over and say, are are you that Dunning?
Speaker 1: I gonna go this is wild? Um. So it's had
Speaker 1: that impact. Um. But but basically, I'm in, let's say,
Speaker 1: the last act of my research career, and the world
Speaker 1: has told me this is what it wants me to
Speaker 1: look at. So we're I'm now really asking the question, Uh,
Speaker 1: do do people really not know what they don't know?
Speaker 1: And what implications does that have? Quite fascinating? When when
Speaker 1: is that research coming out hopefully soon to a journal
Speaker 1: and eventually a book near you? Excellent? Alright, so um,
Speaker 1: let me jump to my favorite questions that we ask
Speaker 1: all of our guests. Feel free to go as long
Speaker 1: and short as you like with this, um, and these
Speaker 1: are really designed to be telling us to who you are,
Speaker 1: because we may not know who you are. Um, what
Speaker 1: was the first car you ever owned? Year, make and model?
Speaker 1: The first car I owned was a nineteen seventies six
Speaker 1: Ford Pinto. It was a Mint Julip green Ford Pinto.
Speaker 1: So if anybody is interested, you should google Mint Julip
Speaker 1: green Forward Pinto and you will see pictures of a
Speaker 1: color that exists nowhere else on this world. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that is insult to injury, a terrible car in an
Speaker 1: awful color. Oh, and that this car was the epitome
Speaker 1: of all of that. So um so a little more
Speaker 1: interesting question. What what are you streaming or listening to
Speaker 1: or or watching these days? Uh? Well, in terms of streaming,
Speaker 1: my taste these days run to um uh, let's say
Speaker 1: intellectual fantasy series like Watchman or West World is about
Speaker 1: to come on Star Trek the Card for example. Uh.
Speaker 1: In terms of streaming music, well, I I'm a BBC
Speaker 1: two excuse me, a BBC six CBC two kind of guy.
Speaker 1: I'm listening to a lot of Canadian pop music at
Speaker 1: the moment. Okay, I was going to say, what is
Speaker 1: BBC six. BBC six is basically British pop music. British
Speaker 1: like great pop from the seventies or Maurice. No, it's contemporary,
Speaker 1: it's more alternative, if you will. But I find what's
Speaker 1: going on in Britain and Canada will be more interesting
Speaker 1: than what's going on in the United States in terms
Speaker 1: of pop. I've been listening to Bob Harris on BBC
Speaker 1: for forever and I love the sort of he covers old,
Speaker 1: old genres in decades, always an interesting and that's exactly
Speaker 1: what these two channels and the Yeah, that's that's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Um and if you like Watchman, I just had this
Speaker 1: conversation yesterday. Have you seen on Amazon Prime The Boys? All? Right?
Speaker 1: So really, very quickly, it's a sort of anti superhero
Speaker 1: world where all the superheroes are these corporate owned entities
Speaker 1: and there turn out to really not be as saving
Speaker 1: society as they appear to be, so much as earning
Speaker 1: a corporate buck. And it's really quite fascinating if you're
Speaker 1: at all interested in Watchman is not quite but there
Speaker 1: are some parallels there that the It was really fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's a little grizzly parts of it, but it's cartoonish,
Speaker 1: so it's not real volume. It's not real violence. It's
Speaker 1: cartoon violence, although you know it can get a little glorious,
Speaker 1: but it's having an contemporary theme y storry imagining, you know,
Speaker 1: this sort of genre in light of contemporary themes, that
Speaker 1: would be very interesting. Yeah, exactly. Um, so what's the
Speaker 1: most important thing that people don't know about David Dunnet?
Speaker 1: M hmm, interesting question. Uh Well, originally, when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I first wanted to be a cartoonist and
Speaker 1: then a screenwriter. In fact, when I was thirteen, I
Speaker 1: actually submitted a spec script to the TV show Mash.
Speaker 1: It was rejected, but I had in my hand. I've
Speaker 1: since lost it and I uh regret regret losing them.
Speaker 1: I had little handwritten notes from Larry Gilbart, the producer
Speaker 1: of the show, who was then and now a hero
Speaker 1: of mine. So yeah, he's an interesting guy. Who were
Speaker 1: some of your early mentors? What psychologists influenced your approach
Speaker 1: to what you do? I would have to say I
Speaker 1: had a great set of mentor as both as an
Speaker 1: undergraduate and as a graduated undergraduate. Uh, Michigan State professors
Speaker 1: of Larry Missy and Joel Arnov were very influential. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then I went to Stanford and I was a Lee
Speaker 1: raw student. Uh and uh, Michigan State taught me rigor
Speaker 1: um Stanford and Lee taught me humanity, how to put
Speaker 1: humanity into the work, make it an interesting human story.
Speaker 1: But I don't think anybody who was around everybody who
Speaker 1: was around Amos Tversky thinks of him as an influence
Speaker 1: because of you want to know what smart looks like.
Speaker 1: Amos was smart, and this is often something I tell undergraduates.
Speaker 1: UM pick a professor who everybody says it's the smartest,
Speaker 1: because you need to see what smart looks like. That
Speaker 1: will be the content doesn't matter. You want to see
Speaker 1: what smart looks like. Uh So Uh, Amos divers Key
Speaker 1: um Phoebel's worth uh were tremendous influences and basically how
Speaker 1: I spend my day quite quite interesting. Uh. Tell us
Speaker 1: about some of your favorite books. What are you reading
Speaker 1: these days? What do you like? Well? The problem with
Speaker 1: the books I read now is they're all related to
Speaker 1: my work, and reading is a little bit tough because
Speaker 1: I do it for the job so much. Um but
Speaker 1: uh So, Actually, what I've been doing is going back
Speaker 1: to classics from my youth. So the book form of
Speaker 1: swing to Cambodia something I recently read, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find girl Escherbach. I can't believe you. You're bringing
Speaker 1: up some of my old time classics. There you go, Well,
Speaker 1: I want to go back now that I'm older, And
Speaker 1: what do I think of them now? For example? Is
Speaker 1: the way to think about it? But Um, a lot
Speaker 1: of what I do is I just read long form
Speaker 1: on the web. So every morning I get the ritzults reads.
Speaker 1: And do you find them interesting? Because I really sift
Speaker 1: through a ton of stuff to find ten really interesting
Speaker 1: things you're sifting. At least to me, it works very
Speaker 1: well if you will, because I find great things to read.
Speaker 1: The thing that I have to do is discipline myself
Speaker 1: not to tweet o the readings you're suggesting, because then
Speaker 1: I'd just be ripping you feel free, Listen. I'm just
Speaker 1: putting together a list of except for Tuesdays where it's
Speaker 1: fifteen instead of ten. I don't know where to for
Speaker 1: Tuesday came from, but somehow that's become I am, um
Speaker 1: a creature of habit, and I've learned that if I
Speaker 1: want to do do something, if I can turn it
Speaker 1: into a habit, I can make it repetitive, and it's
Speaker 1: really just once you start doing something for a month
Speaker 1: or two, it becomes ingrained. Forget a decade or two.
Speaker 1: That's a whole different thing. And that The Reads began
Speaker 1: as a way of just being organized. There's so much
Speaker 1: stuff to read. Let me eliminate all the junk and
Speaker 1: let me see what's left that that's good. People don't
Speaker 1: realize this is really a golden age of journalism writing.
Speaker 1: I used to go through the process of the morning
Speaker 1: of figuring out what's relevant and what do I want
Speaker 1: to read? That sort of concept of creation by extreme prejudice,
Speaker 1: by by saying, if this isn't well done and well
Speaker 1: researched and well written and on a topic that's interesting,
Speaker 1: I can't be bothered with it. Because everything is so
Speaker 1: ephemeral and superficial. Lead to I used to do that manually,
Speaker 1: used to print it out. This is a hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: and someone said, hey, could you just give me a
Speaker 1: list of what you're reading instead of a hard copy?
Speaker 1: And okay, And that eventually became that eventually became the
Speaker 1: Morning Reads. And I think I've been doing that for
Speaker 1: like twenty years or so. It's it's I'm at the
Speaker 1: point now where I could be a sentence or two
Speaker 1: into a peace and I'm like, nope, Like I could
Speaker 1: tell immediately if something is is good or bad. Um,
Speaker 1: so you're not reading a whole lot of books in
Speaker 1: other wise, No, basically because I do so much treating
Speaker 1: that I prefer shorter, punch eier things. Uh. And you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right. There's so much terrific information, some terrific blogs
Speaker 1: on the web, for example, that I can give it
Speaker 1: in that give us some some blog names. The blog
Speaker 1: name I would point out actually is a blog called
Speaker 1: Stumbling and Mumbling. Oh sure, I remember that from that
Speaker 1: became big about ten twelve, fifteen years. Well, it still
Speaker 1: goes on, and I find the the blogger to be
Speaker 1: extremely persuasive. It's about England, so it's not about the
Speaker 1: Knights State. Uh. So that's good. And um often has
Speaker 1: some insights I would dearly love to steal. Um. But
Speaker 1: but that one I find to be quite good. In
Speaker 1: terms of political commentary. The blog Progress Pond I find
Speaker 1: to be extremely interesting familiar. Um. But well it's a
Speaker 1: it's a democratic activist, if you will. But he's rather
Speaker 1: clear eyed. Um. He does stand off from the sermon
Speaker 1: drum of the day to really try to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on, or to project what's going on a
Speaker 1: Bernie bro not, in fact, he is not a Bernie
Speaker 1: bro That's absolutely clear. It's by the time this broadcast
Speaker 1: we will already have had the Super Tuesday results, we
Speaker 1: will be pretty deep into um the primary season. We
Speaker 1: may even have a nominee by then. That that will
Speaker 1: be kind of kind of interesting. Do you when you
Speaker 1: look at politics, do you ever find yourself with opinions
Speaker 1: and then catch yourself saying self saying, I have no
Speaker 1: expertise in this, this is just my own opinion. Are
Speaker 1: you self aware of your own Dunning Krueger? Well, in politics?
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. Whenever I pronounced something in politics, I usually
Speaker 1: uh precade it or or or preamble it with well,
Speaker 1: this is for entertainment value only, but quite interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: tell us about a time you failed and what you
Speaker 1: learned from the experience. Uh well, um, a chronic failure
Speaker 1: I had. Ultimately it was successful or the project was successful,
Speaker 1: but it took fifteen years. Was this work on trust?
Speaker 1: Where basically the finding is is that people trust complete strangers,
Speaker 1: even though economics tells us they shouldn't, because why would
Speaker 1: a person ever honor your trust their complete stranger. But
Speaker 1: people do trust UH, and our civilization profits because of that.
Speaker 1: And I looked at that, I said, Okay, clearly the
Speaker 1: economics is failing. Clearly two years and and a psychological
Speaker 1: team will be able to figure this out. So I
Speaker 1: tried hypothesis after hypothesis after hypothesis and ran hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of subjects. All my hypotheses um failed.
Speaker 1: They often failed in interesting ways, they failed in ways
Speaker 1: that cohered with one another, but for the life I
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what was going on. That ultimately led
Speaker 1: to this emphasis on norms and the norm of respect
Speaker 1: and politeness with other people. We trust other people, um,
Speaker 1: because we have to respect them, and to distrust them
Speaker 1: is to disrespect them. That took fifteen years in the
Speaker 1: making to get to. What I learned from that, though,
Speaker 1: is I learned that there can be rules of human nature,
Speaker 1: but they can be so deep that none of our
Speaker 1: subjects knew what was going on. People could never explain it.
Speaker 1: And I'm the professional, and I couldn't explain it. Some
Speaker 1: things can run that deep. So that's what I learned.
Speaker 1: But that was fifteen years of failed data which I
Speaker 1: could only bear because of the good graces of tenure. Huh.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting that there's a book that comes it's
Speaker 1: sort of related to the normative issue and and the
Speaker 1: trust issue. And there's a whole bunch of cognitive other
Speaker 1: things by a Will Shure Store called The Heretics Adventures
Speaker 1: with the Enemies of Science. So usually I'm not familiar
Speaker 1: with it. So he is a journalist who embeds himself
Speaker 1: with all sorts of groups that you would otherwise think
Speaker 1: of as wacky, extreme crazy, and whether it's Clad Arthur's
Speaker 1: or science deniers or climate change, it's one group after
Speaker 1: another that's very elevant to the science and Nile issue.
Speaker 1: And his sort of thesis is these people aren't dead
Speaker 1: or evil or dumb. There's something fundamentally wrong with their
Speaker 1: basic model of the world. And once that building block
Speaker 1: is set, you know, it's like aiming for the moon.
Speaker 1: If you're off just a little bit an inch or two, here,
Speaker 1: you're off by millions of miles as you whiz by.
Speaker 1: When they're fundamental model of the universe is off, everything
Speaker 1: constructed on top of that just takes them in these
Speaker 1: crazy directions and it's not Hey, these aren't necessary. Some
Speaker 1: of these are evil people, but that's not necessarily how
Speaker 1: they went so far astray. It's a fundamental, fundamental error
Speaker 1: that just keeps compounding. And uh, it's quite fascinating. It's
Speaker 1: it's really an interesting book. If you've never if you've
Speaker 1: if you've never seen it before. Um So what do
Speaker 1: you do for fun? What do you do when you're
Speaker 1: not read in academic research papers? Well, I'm older, so
Speaker 1: a lot of what I do is I watch stuff
Speaker 1: on a screen, whether it be television or not. Um uh,
Speaker 1: during the when the terms in session, um, I will
Speaker 1: tend to watch a lot of sports, but not the
Speaker 1: typical sports. So I'm a big fan of Arsenal, the
Speaker 1: soccer team in England. And I know that your knowledgeable
Speaker 1: listeners out there are thinking, oh, I'm so sorry. Um No, well,
Speaker 1: World Cup is fascinating and when you get to what
Speaker 1: World Cup soccer is really, there's no commercial breaks. It's
Speaker 1: practically they don't you know American sports you're used to
Speaker 1: exactly you know, you you watch World Cup and like
Speaker 1: there have been times where it's like, gee, it's sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a break. Yet it's kind of amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: And there's a flow of that game that is really unique,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful sport if you appreciate it for
Speaker 1: what it is. It really is the beautiful game. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of strategy and a lot of incident
Speaker 1: going on once you've been around it enough to realize
Speaker 1: what incident is. I mean, there's not much scoring, but
Speaker 1: that actually makes the games more exciting because a goal
Speaker 1: matters so much. The games are always on edge and um,
Speaker 1: things could change in a in a minute. Um that
Speaker 1: it can truly lead to excitement, but it's also a
Speaker 1: sport that can truly lead to despair. I found uniquely well.
Speaker 1: I live in New York, so between the Mets and
Speaker 1: the Knicks, I know all about despare the I wish
Speaker 1: they would stop with the flopping in in World Cup
Speaker 1: and soccer. It's gotten to be way too much. So
Speaker 1: within your your field, what are you most optimistic about
Speaker 1: today and what are you most pessimistic about the most
Speaker 1: exciting thing in my field right now is the introduction
Speaker 1: of big data, if you will. That is, there are
Speaker 1: many social psychological questions and also questions of interests. People
Speaker 1: in the world that can be addressed with big data. Um,
Speaker 1: there's just great sources of data out there. And how
Speaker 1: it's going to be exploited. I have no idea, but
Speaker 1: I bet it's going to be great. So in the
Speaker 1: field of behavioral science in general, I'm very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to that as long as people who have the
Speaker 1: data and ash and the people who no traditional theory
Speaker 1: join up, because it is the case that a lot
Speaker 1: of people who do traditional theory don't know that these
Speaker 1: data sources exist, and so opportunities are missed, and the
Speaker 1: people who have big data don't realize that they can
Speaker 1: be quite naive and they're thinking about how to test
Speaker 1: the ideas that they have. They need to connect up
Speaker 1: with the theory people. If that happens, it's going to
Speaker 1: be great, quite interesting. I always look at Facebook, which
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of as a user, and
Speaker 1: I just imagine they must have unbelievable reams of data
Speaker 1: about all sorts of individuals and groups, and then how
Speaker 1: um how they behave in certain situations. I gotta think
Speaker 1: a team of research psychologists could have a field day
Speaker 1: with that. Oh uh, anthropologists, sociologist, economists, you name it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely interesting. And our our final two questions, what sort
Speaker 1: of advice would you give to uh recent college graduate
Speaker 1: who was interested in a career in psychology and research?
Speaker 1: Uh interest Uh, get some mentors and get more than
Speaker 1: one essentially absolutely, whether they be from your home institution
Speaker 1: or it's just your going to or wherever. Uh. People
Speaker 1: are willing to give advice, and some of it is
Speaker 1: actually good. Um. But also um uh meet people, be
Speaker 1: someone aggressive that but also presents yourself, give talks, have
Speaker 1: a blog, for example. Uh. It forces you to think,
Speaker 1: but it also gets you out there for people to see.
Speaker 1: And I don't think younger folks do that do that much.
Speaker 1: There are younger folks who do that, but I think
Speaker 1: there could be many more voices added to the mix.
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
Speaker 1: world of psychology today that you would you knew thirty
Speaker 1: years ago or so when you were just beginning your career.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's extremely interesting question. Um. I I sort
Speaker 1: of wish I had known what the trends were going
Speaker 1: to be uh in my field, because I've been around
Speaker 1: the block for quite a bit and I was the
Speaker 1: reason I'm in psychology is because this is the specific issues.
Speaker 1: They were at the forefront of psychology and social psychology
Speaker 1: at that point, and then it was really about misbelief,
Speaker 1: errors that people made and so forth. That's sort of
Speaker 1: the foundation which I built my career. Uh now, and
Speaker 1: by the way, what we weren't asked to do is
Speaker 1: we weren't asked to solve those questions. The idea of
Speaker 1: nudging with several decades into the future, and now the
Speaker 1: field is very much about Okay, what do you do
Speaker 1: about it? And I'm I'm a little bit behind the
Speaker 1: younger generation because I didn't have to pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: And I wish I had known that at some point
Speaker 1: the field was going to get to the obvious question
Speaker 1: of we have all this knowledge about what people do
Speaker 1: that is a mistake, how do you get people to
Speaker 1: avoid those mistakes or repair those mistakes, or how in
Speaker 1: general do you improve people's lives. Finally the field got
Speaker 1: to that. I wish someone had come to me and
Speaker 1: basically said, that question is going to be the question
Speaker 1: in the future. You should prepare. But you know, not
Speaker 1: too long ago, it wasn't really thought of his academics jobs.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, just tell us what the knowledge is
Speaker 1: and the policymakers will figure out that's absolutely right. It
Speaker 1: was going to be uh, that was going to be
Speaker 1: offloaded to somebody else. But it's finally come into the field.
Speaker 1: And I think in part because science does react to
Speaker 1: society and um uh, now people are developing apps to
Speaker 1: do this, computer programs to do that new technology that
Speaker 1: helps us other thing. So the idea is the endpoint
Speaker 1: is how do you develop something that people can use?
Speaker 1: Is much more in the heads of younger researchers than
Speaker 1: it is for older researchers. Researchers they think of that
Speaker 1: as a natural end point of research. And uh, I
Speaker 1: should have gone, I should have been prepared for that
Speaker 1: shifting time. Quite quite interesting. Um, thank you David for
Speaker 1: being so generous with your time. We have been speaking
Speaker 1: with Professor David Dunning of the University of Michigan. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, well look up an intro Down
Speaker 1: an Inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any
Speaker 1: of the previous three hundred plus conversations we've had over
Speaker 1: the past five and a half years. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Leave comments. What was I gonna say?
Speaker 1: Leave a review on Apple iTunes? Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to see the daily reads at Professor Dunning Reference, you
Speaker 1: could find those at rid Halts dot com and sign
Speaker 1: up there. Check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the crack staff who
Speaker 1: helps me put together uh this conversation each week. Sam
Speaker 1: Chivraj is my producer slash booker. Michael Batnick is my
Speaker 1: head of research. Nick Falco is my audio engineer. I'm
Speaker 1: Barry Hults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio