I believe that about the various effects of psychology, everyone has learned a lot. The effect I want to talk about today, the name may not be common, but it appears very often in our work and life. Especially in the information age, this effect is more common when many things will be discussed on the Internet.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect? This effect describes a cognitive bias phenomenon, which refers to the phenomenon that people with insufficient ability make wrong conclusions on the basis of unconsidered decisions, but cannot recognize their own shortcomings and cannot distinguish wrong behaviors, that is, the lack of thinking caused by insufficient ability, and on this basis, they make biased decisions to draw wrong conclusions, but they do not know it, and they are accompanied by extreme self-confidence.
Images are from the web
This effect was developed by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning after hearing about the "banking incident" with graduate student Justin Kruger through a design of experiments study. Through experiments, Dunning and Kruger found that people with poor logical reasoning ability overestimated their actual ability and thought that their level was above average; on the contrary, people with good logical reasoning ability generally underestimated their actual ability.
Nobel laureate in physics Adam Riess had an interesting experience. While looking at Type 1A supernovae in the universe, Riess and his colleagues found that, contrary to what was widely believed to be slowing its expansion after the Big Bang, the data they observed showed an acceleration in expansion. Riess says that when they first saw the data, they thought there must be something wrong with the data because it didn't match the existing model at the time. But through repeated observation and analysis, everyone finally realized that the data was correct, and what needed to be corrected was the model itself. It is now accepted by the scientific community that the effects of "dark energy" have indeed caused the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
During a conversation, the experience was brought up, and Riess was asked how he could persist in repeatedly validating and reshaping theoretical models under the influence of "confirmation bias" and "motivational reasoning." Riess replies that this is due to the scientific belief he has always insisted on: "We test hypotheses experimentally, but if the data does not match the model, the hypothesis must be changed." This is similar to the philosophy of the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, who said, "No matter how perfect your model is, no matter how clever you are, if it doesn't match the experiment, it's wrong."
Images are from the web
Later, Riess was asked what he thought of the insights that some people thought were valuable, and who thought they could make some meaningful contribution, even though their understanding of fundamental physics was still lacking.
Riess said that at regular intervals in his career, he has received "advice" from people without a background, some of whom have not even taken physics classes at university and try to explain to themselves the mysteries of the universe.
"In my opinion, these suggestions are more like gibberish, just sentences that mix terms and equations, and seem to have no logic at all. These people seem to want to say that they have made a terrible discovery, want me to help them verify, and even some people want me to recommend the Nobel Prize, but the reality is that these people know so little that they don't know that what they are saying is unreasonable, and these people usually work alone and do not cooperate with others. I'm happy to explain scientific listening, but when some people's theories are not problematic but based on misunderstandings, the interaction loses its meaning."
Riess went on to say, "What surprised me was not how outlandish their theories were, but their unwavering in their 'correct understanding.'" The scientists I know are always worried about whether their understanding is correct, and these people are not worried about this problem at all. ”
Looking back at the current internet environment, the per capita Oxbridge level, everyone doing their own "research" online, democratizing all opinions as if expertise were dead, so much so that everyone confidently believed that their views were as accurate and valid as the opinions of experts. Exploring the mysteries of science is a very difficult task, but there are always people who think that the conclusions they draw from experience or limited data are the most correct, not to mention that those fields that do not have the word science are really experts per capita.
Images are from the web
The existence of this phenomenon also has a certain relationship with human nature. When some negative news comes out such as "the variant of the new crown virus is deadly", "the earth is warming is accelerating because of some human behavior", and "a massive unknown object is moving in the direction of the earth", the extremely confident objections of some people are not difficult to understand.
The deep causes of the Dunning-Kruger effect are currently believed to be related to the inadequacy of individual "metacognitive ability". Between the actual ability level and self-evaluation, the existence of metacognitive level is a mediating variable, high-ability individuals can not correctly evaluate their ability level (good grades), low-ability individuals themselves do not have the ability to achieve good results, so they are even more unable to accurately evaluate their own ability level. Both of these categories are manifestations of flawed metacognitive abilities.
You may wonder why people with high ability also misestimate their performance (high performance and low evaluation)? Later experiments suggested that this may be influenced by the false consistency effect. People with high ability are not sensitive to the characteristics of their own high ability, but because they perform well, they mistakenly predict that others are doing well, so they are particularly "modest" in the evaluation of self-ability and ranking. This perception can be adjusted, and when people with high ability recognize the true performance of others, they will adjust their evaluation of their performance.
Do people who are plagued by the Dunning-Kruger effect still have a chance to "save"? The experimental results show that the answer is yes. Those who have undergone competency training, whether high-ability or low-ability individuals, will evaluate themselves closer to their true level. People who have not received ability training will not have this change. Lack of ability is not terrible, because you can improve your ability through continuous learning and training in your own field, but not being aware of your own ability is a relatively terrible thing, because it will not only limit the development of your potential ability, hinder growth, but also bring a lot of confusion to yourself and the people around you. So in the next issue, we will explore how to improve metacognitive ability.
【Original article, welcome to reprint, please indicate the source ♥】