The origin of the "lost confidence" – the Dunning-Kruger effect , ignorance is not an umbrella

In recent years, the mainland men's football team has lost more than won.

In April this year, a new humiliating score record was set, and Suzhou refused to receive it!

The performance of the men's football team has broken the hearts of domestic fans... The whole network launched a challenge to the national football team!

As a result, some fans jumped out and shouted, "The national football team is like this, it is better for me to be the head coach!" ”

If you encounter similar things and often think so, such as changing you as a coach can change the status quo of the mainland men's football team, then you have to be vigilant, you have committed a cognitive bias - Dunning Kruger effect.

In addition to the example of the national football team mentioned above, we often hear such words in daily life:

"What's so hard about being a photographer, isn't it just about taking a few photos?"

"What's so hard about dancing, I can learn these few moves casually."

"What's so hard about writing an essay, I'm very good at college entrance examination essays, and I can write as well as you with typing with my feet!"

Some people often have a high evaluation of themselves, so confident, and actually very ordinary (puxin).

On the other hand, people with high knowledge and successful careers are often relatively humble, humble and humble.

This is actually also influenced by the Dunning-Kruger effect, so what is the Dunning Kruger effect? This article will introduce this cognitive bias in detail through 4900 words, and to understand this bias, you can know:

1. Why are some people so ordinary but so confident?

2. Why is it that when you first enter a field, your self-confidence expands at first, and the more you learn, the more you become weak?

3. Why are people who are good at being more humble and respectful, and never stop learning?

01

What is the Dunning-Kruger effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed in 1999 by Dunning, a professor of social psychology in the United States, and his apprentice Kruger, so it is called the Dunning Kruger effect. Kruger Effect), also known as the D-K Effect.

It refers to the deviation of the evaluation of their own ability when completing a certain task, and those with poor ability will overestimate their ability level, and those with high ability will underestimate their ability level.

People with lack of ability have an illusory sense of self-superiority, mistakenly thinking that they are better than the real situation, while people with strong ability underestimate their own performance and feel that they are ordinary.

The proposal of this study actually has a ridiculous story -

There was a robber who robbed two banks, and it was puzzling that the robber did not make any disguise when he robbed.

The police quickly caught him. When he was arrested, he looked at the police with a look of disbelief, "How did you find me so quickly, I smeared lemon juice on my face!" ”

Lemon juice can be used as invisible ink, and the handwriting written in lemon juice will only appear when it comes into contact with the heat source, and the robber feels that by smearing the lemon juice on his face and not going near the heat source, he can become invisible.

This story of this stupid thief caught the attention of Professor Dunning, who led the students to test their ideas with experiments, and they did 4 experiments to confirm this deviation -

They had participants rate their abilities, including logical reasoning, emotional intelligence, and understanding of AIDS.

The study found that those with abilities of 10 to 15 points often gave themselves a score of 55 to 60 points, and those who originally knew these fields very well also gave themselves a score of about 55 to 60 points.

That is to say, people who really understand are humble, while those who do not understand at all have a high self-evaluation that exceeds their actual situation.

In addition, Dunning and Kruger also studied people's reading, driving, chess, playing tennis and other skills, and found that:

• People with poor abilities often overestimate the level of their skills;
• People with poor abilities cannot recognize the level of other people who really have this skill;
• People with poor ability are unable to recognize and face up to their own deficiencies and the extreme extent of their deficiencies;
• If people with poor abilities are trained to significantly increase their level of ability, they will eventually recognize and acknowledge the previous level of ignorance.

Dunning summed up this effect as "If you don't have the ability, you won't know you don't have the ability." ”

02

Causes of the Dunning-Kruger effect

2.1 The double dilemma of the incompetent

A person's ability in a certain field has two levels of meaning:

(1) His outstanding ability in the field;

(2) He can accurately evaluate his own ability level in this field, including his own ability to or others.

This ability is also known as "metacognitive ability", which not only knows how well they are performing, but also makes an accurate evaluation of their own ability, which is what is called "knowing what it is, knowing why it is so".

People with strong abilities are also more metacognitive, so they can reasonably cognitively assess their abilities.

People with low ability face a double dilemma:

(1) Do not know the ability performance of high-ability people;

(2) Do not know that their ability is low, but have unwarranted confidence in their own ability.

Similar examples, there are many in daily life -

Students with poor academic performance are more difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of their own course learning, and often overestimate their mastery of knowledge before the exam, until the exam or exam results come out to know that they have not mastered the relevant knowledge;

Employees with poor performance who think that there is no problem with their abilities, and poor performance is just a lack of opportunities and leadership appreciation;

Men with social disabilities, they can not recognize their lack of social etiquette, straight men have a hard time to understand why they are not pleasing to girls. (Commonly known as Puxin male)

2.2 Metacognitive deficits

Dunning and Kruger conducted a total of 4 experiments to verify "bias in their own ability cognition at different levels of individual ability in different fields" and "metacognition plays a mediating role in a person's actual ability and self-evaluation".

In an experiment, they first arranged for the participants to do Watson's "4 card selection homework", and after doing it, half of the subjects first learned logical reasoning ability, and the other half did irrelevant task homework, and then let the participant predict the number of questions they answered correctly, and then assessed their logical thinking ability level percentile.

The findings suggest:

(1) Participants with low logical reasoning ability ranked high on the percentile of their own ability;

(2) Participants with high logical reasoning ability underestimated the percentile ranking of their ability;

(3) Subjects with low logical reasoning ability, after ability training, reduced their ability to predict percentiles;

(4) Subjects with high reasoning ability, after ability training, improved their ability to predict percentiles, and the prediction level is roughly the same as the actual level;

(5) Subjects who have not been trained in ability, regardless of ability, have not changed their evaluation of the previous ranking.

In other words, metacognition can mediate between an individual's objective ability level in a certain field and self-evaluation.

Although individuals can achieve good results on aptitude tests, they are still unable to properly evaluate their ability levels, and those with worse abilities are even less able to correctly evaluate their abilities because of their flawed metacognitive abilities.

2.3 False Consistency

It is not difficult to understand that low-ability people often have an overestimation of their own abilities, while those with higher abilities should be able to fully recognize their own abilities, so why is there a cognitive bias in themselves?

Some scholars have summarized and analyzed that this is caused by consistency bias.

False consistency refers to the universality of people who often overestimate or exaggerate their beliefs, judgments, and behaviors.

It is easy to think that others think the same as us, assuming that we are the same as others, such as being suspicious of ourselves and thinking that others are suspicious; I am sociable myself and I think others are sociable.

For people with high ability, who perform well at work, they mistakenly think that others are the same, and they are not sensitive to the characteristics of their own ability to highlight, and when they see the performance of others, they will adjust their judgment, so that their judgment is more accurate.

2.4 Influences in everyday life

The influence from our daily work and life can make us skew our evaluation of ourselves.

In normal social life, we always want to give others a friendly attitude and positive evaluation, while others are often more willing to accept good evaluations.

When we hear positive reviews, we will gladly accept them, and when we hear opinions and suggestions or criticisms, the first reaction is always unhappy.

Therefore, although we realize that an evaluation (positive) is not objective, we will still accept it gladly, and resist criticism and accusation, which will lead to a deviation in our perception of ourselves.

03

The 4 stages of cognition

A few years ago, after the forwarding of Wang Huiwen, vice president of the US group, the following "Dunning-Gluck Psychological Effect" chart swept the circle of friends, and the Dunning-Gluck effect was also famous.

But the picture below is not from the hands of psychologists Dunning and Kruger, the creator is someone else.

(Dunning Kruger effect misinformation diagram illustrated)

Based on the results of Dunning and Kruger's research, his people added oil and vinegar, stretched and deformed, and made this unforgettable curve.

It is a comical hyperbole of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but does not represent the exact meaning of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

We only need to keep in mind the meaning of the Dunning-Kruger effect: individuals deviate from their own abilities when they complete a task, and those with less ability will overestimate their ability level, and those with higher ability will underestimate their ability level.

However, the above chart still has good reference significance, especially for the cognitive self in self-improvement.

How to understand the above diagram? When a person is exposed to a certain field, with the deepening and improvement of cognition, his self-confidence will go through 4 obvious stages of change-

Stage 1: The Peak of Ignorance (Don't Know What You Don't Know)

When a person is new to a field, as his understanding of this field deepens, his self-confidence will increase rapidly, even if he only knows half of it.

However, due to his own ability and vision, he simply did not have the ability to correctly assess his level.

At this time, a person has ascended to the so-called peak of ignorance, and people who stand on this peak often feel good about themselves, feel that life has reached the peak, and can arbitrarily evaluate the level and deeds of experts.

For example, some football enthusiasts clamor for being a "national men's football coach" and just learn to play the flute and excitedly feel that they are an instrumental genius.

Stage 2: Bottom of Despair (Knowing You Don't Know Anything)

At this stage, it is the "doubting life" stage in "three years of initial learning, and then three years of doubting life", the more you know, the more you can find your own ignorance.

It turned out that his own insight was actually pitifully small, full of self-doubt, self-denial, and self-knowledge began to collapse.

In the Valley of Despair, on the brink of "continuing" and "giving up," if you give up, you are doomed to be a loser, and if you continue, this is the most difficult stage – and the effort is not necessarily rewarded.

The valley of despair brings more, is the growth and maturity of the mind, people who have experienced despair, people will be more solid and stable, the so-called well-informed, slowly moving towards the slope of enlightenment.

Stage Three: The Slope of Enlightenment (Knowing What You Don't Know)

When a person does not sink to the bottom of despair, then, as he continues to grow, his self-confidence will slowly grow.

When the knowledge and vision reach a certain level, you can correctly measure your own level, and you can see clearly what you know and what you don't know.

It is a process of slow growth of knowledge, confidence, and ability, and a process of slowly reconstructing cognition.

The fourth stage: reaching the pinnacle (knowing what you know)

At this stage, cognition is no longer limited to the known and unknown, but more importantly, it can accurately measure its own level and be able to keenly judge what knowledge is still available for study.

At this stage, he will gain the confidence to match his knowledge and achievements, and has reached the level of experts in the field.

The above four stages are the necessary passages for a person to enter a field, the vast majority of people "do not know that they do not know", we must actively walk through the mountain of ignorance, cross the valley of despair, at least to slowly move forward on the slope of enlightenment, the ultimate goal is to run to the "continuous stability of the plain".

05

How to avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect?

First of all, it must be clear that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not a tool for connotation attacking others, but should be used to reflect on oneself!

Scott Adams, author of the popular comic strip Dilbert, said:

"If you think the other person's idea is terrible, then at least one of the two of you is stupid, but you can't be sure who this person really is"

This is the wisdom of prudence and humility.

The misinformation diagram of the Dunning-Kruger effect is so popular precisely because many people use it as a weapon to "run on others."

Many people "treat themselves with leniency, be strict with him", send the map to social software to show to "some people", ridicule those who stand on the peak of ignorance, but do not have much reflection on themselves, but they may not realize that this ridicule may be the performance of their own standing on the peak of ignorance...

So who is "ignorant" and who is "enlightened"?

The first problem we have to solve is how to assess our own abilities more accurately and objectively, rather than assessing the abilities of others, not to find out who is the "ignorant person".

So, how can we avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect?

1. Learn to question yourself and slow down decision-making

Unless you're a world-class expert, quick decision-making often makes biased and irrational decisions, and you can question yourself before making any decision.

This does not mean negative self-denial, but rather a slight pause before making a decision and asking yourself:

"Can I meet such a standard?"

"How did I make this judgment, and is it highly accurate?"

Reasonable self-questioning can help us be more calm and rational when making decisions, recognize our current situation, and reasonably adjust our ability judgment in this field.

2. Seek outside feedback

"I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, only because I am in this mountain", we always feel that we are the people who know ourselves best.

In fact, people need to correctly understand themselves in their interactions with others.

Therefore, when appropriate, listen to the feedback of the outside world, whether it is good or bad.

Of course, here I hope that we can all have friends and partners who tell the truth, and sincere criticism is always more beneficial than polite compliments, and it is also more difficult to hear.

Sometimes criticism is the right evaluation, and we must learn to discern and accept.

3. Insist on in-depth learning

If you're temporarily incompetent, inexperienced, or don't fully understand things, don't fool yourself into thinking you're doing a good job. We must face up to our own shortcomings and weaknesses.

(1) Learn from more powerful people what you don't know

We have to learn from more powerful people, take better people as the standard, understand the results of their performance and output, learn their strengths and methods, and constantly look at them.

(2) Continue to cultivate deeply in the identified field

The law of 10,000 hours points out that anyone who does something, as long as they have been tempered for 10,000 hours, can change from an ordinary person to a top talent in a certain field.

We have identified a field, to continue to deepen the cultivation, in order to reach the level of experts, anything can not be achieved overnight, only through continuous learning and practice, improve their skills and knowledge level, after painful growth, in order to have enough ability, recognize their own shortcomings, and truly achieve "knowing what it is, knowing why it is so".

summary

Darwin said: Ignorance is more confident than erudition.

Shakespeare said: The fool is self-righteous, and the wise man is self-aware.

You see, the fool is laughing at the wise, the wise, but they are still learning and specializing.

The so-called "fool" is not necessarily myself

The Dunning-Kruger effect tells us – not too confident or presumptuous.

The more you know about the world, the clearer you will know about yourself, so don't give up on learning

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Author: Hiphop Village Give time for reflection