Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Dunning-Kruger effect describes the cognitive distortion in the self- image of incompetent people to overestimate their own knowledge and ability. This tendency is based on the inability to objectively assess oneself using metacognition . The term, which is unusual in the specialist literature, goes back to a publication by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999.

Basic idea

The two social psychologists had noticed in previous studies that, for example, when capturing texts, playing chess or driving a car, ignorance often leads to more self-confidence than knowledge. At Cornell University they researched this effect in further experiments and came to the result in 1999 that less competent people

  • tend to overestimate their own abilities,
  • fail to recognize superior abilities in others,
  • do not correctly assess the extent of their incompetence,
  • through education or practice, not only can you increase your competence, but you can also learn to assess yourself and others better.

Dunning and Kruger showed that poor performance in such people is often associated with greater overconfidence than higher performance. In Self-insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (2005), Dunning described the Dunning-Kruger effect as “the anosognosias of everyday life”, referring to a neurological disorder in which a disabled person either denies their disability or seem unaware of their disability. He explained:

“If you are incompetent, you cannot know that you are incompetent [...] The skills you need to give a correct answer are exactly the skills you need to know what a correct answer is "

- David Dunning

Fundamental statements on this topic can be found much earlier in the literature. So wrote William Butler Yeats in his 1920 published poem : The Second Coming as "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." (To German: "The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate character." ) In his essay The Triumph of Stupidity , Bertrand Russell wrote on May 10, 1933: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt" (translated: "The main reason for the The difficulty lies in the fact that in the modern world the stupid are perfectly safe while the intelligent are full of doubt. ").

reception

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is rarely mentioned in the psychological literature, but it is often mentioned in blogs and discussion forums on the Internet and in academic publications outside of psychology. In a cognitive science publication on the denial of man-made global warming , the Dunning-Kruger effect is mentioned as a possible explanation for the ignorance of scientific processes.

In 2000, Dunning and Kruger received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in psychology for their study .

Cultural differences

Studies of the Dunning-Kruger effect have typically been done in North Americans, but studies in Japanese suggest that cultural forces play a role in the occurrence of the effect. A study from 2001 shows that the Japanese tend to underestimate their abilities and that they use failure primarily as an opportunity to improve and thus to become more valuable to their own social group.

See also

literature

  • Justin Kruger, David Dunning: Unskilled and unaware of it. How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments . In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . tape 77 , no. 6 , 1999, p. 1121–1134 (English, full text , as of March 3, 2011 [PDF; 498 kB ]).
  • Mark Benecke : Laughing Science. From the secret archives of the Nobel Prize for Fun. Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2005, ISBN 3-404-60556-X , pp. 185–190.
  • Philipp Hermanns: Organizational Hubris - The rise and fall of a celebrity firm using the example of CargoLifter AG . Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-942720-33-5 . Also available as an open access version at: FU Berlin: Dissertations online .
  • Stav Atir, David Dunning, Emily Rosenzweig: When Knowledge Knows No Bounds: Self-Perceived Expertise Predicts Claims of Impossible Knowledge. In: Psychological Science. Published online before printing on July 14, 2015, doi: 10.1177 / 0956797615588195 .
  • D. Dunning, C. Heath, JM Suls: Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. In: Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Volume 5, No. 3, December 2004, pp. 69-106, doi: 10.1111 / j.1529-1006.2004.00018.x .
  • D. Dunning, K. Johnson, J. Ehrlinger, J. Kruger: Why people fail to recognize their own incompetence. In: Current Directions in Psychological Science. Volume 12, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 83-87, doi: 10.1111 / 1467-8721.01235 .
  • J. Ehrlinger, K. Johnson, M. Banner, D. Dunning, J. Kruger: Why the unskilled are unaware: Further explorations of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent. In: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Volume 105, No. 1, January 2008, pp. 98-121, doi: 10.1016 / j.obhdp.2007.05.002 .
  • J. Ehrlinger, D. Dunning: How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Volume 84, No. 1, January 2003, pp. 5-17. PMID 12518967 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David W. Lawrence: The Information-Seeking Behaviors of Professionals and Information Sources in the Field of Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion. (PDF; 907 kB) In: diss.kib.ki.se. Karolinska Institutet, 2008, p. 37 , archived from the original on February 20, 2009 ; accessed on August 17, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ W. Keith Campbell, Joshua D. Miller: The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ 2011, ISBN 978-0-470-60722-0 ( p. 400 in Google Book Search, accessed August 17, 2020).
  3. ↑ Justin Kruger, David Dunning: Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . tape 77 , no. 6 , 1999, ISSN  1939-1315 , pp. 1121–1134 , doi : 10.1037 / 0022-3514.77.6.1121 (English).
  4. ↑ After: Errol Morris: The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is (Part 1) , Opinionator from June 20, 2010 (English), last accessed August 17, 2020.
  5. ^ William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming . In: Francis Fisher Browne (ed.): The Dial . tape 69 . Jansen, McClurg, New York 1920, pp. 466 (English).
  6. ^ Bertrand Russell: The Triumph of Stupidity . In: Harry Ruja (Ed.): Mortals and Others Volume II: American Essays, 1931–1935 . Routledge, London / New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-415-17867-9 , pp. 28 (English).
  7. ↑ Irene Cheng, Chris Kerr, Walter F. Bischof: Assessing Rhythm Recognition Skills in a Multimedia Environment. In: 2008 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo. P. 361–364 ( PDF; 427 kB , accessed on August 17, 2020).
  8. ^ Christian Kraler, Michael Schratz: Quality of training and competence in the teaching profession . Lit, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2007, ISBN 3-8258-0603-0 , p. 45 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed August 17, 2020]).
  9. ^ Philipp Hermanns: Organizational Hubris. Rise and fall of a celebrity firm using the example of CargoLifter AG . Kölner Wissenschaftsverlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-942720-33-5 ( p. 15 ff. In the Google book search, accessed on August 17, 2020).
  10. ^ Colin Cramer: Assessment of the educational science studies by student teachers in the first training phase in longitudinal section. In: Journal for Pedagogy. 1/2013, p. 78 ( PDF; 322 kB , accessed on August 17, 2020).
  11. ↑ Lawrence Torcello: The Ethics of Belief, Cognition, and Climate Change Pseudoskepticism: Implications for Public Discourse . In: Topics in Cognitive Science . tape 8 , 2016, p. 19-48, especially pp. 21-23 , doi : 10.1111 / tops.12179 (English).
  12. ^ The 2000 Ig Nobel Prize Winners. In: improbable.com. Retrieved August 17, 2020 .
  13. ^ American Psychological Association: Monitor on psychology: a publication of the American Psychological Association . In: Monitor on psychology. A publication of the American Psychological Association . 2008, ISSN  1529-4978 ( online [accessed August 17, 2020]).
  14. ^ Divergent Consequences of Success and Failure in Japan and North America: An Investigation of Self-Improving Motivations and Malleable Selves . In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 2008, ISSN  0022-3514 ( online [PDF; 35 kB ; accessed on August 17, 2020]).