192 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect (rebroadcast)

You Are Not So Smart

Science, Psychology, Brain, Business, Mental Health, Culture, Neuroscience, Mind, Health

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2020

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we explore why we are unaware that we lack the skill to tell how unskilled and unaware we are. The evidence gathered so far by psychologists and neuroscientists seems to suggest that each one of us has a relationship with our own ignorance, a dishonest, complicated relationship, and that dishonesty keeps us sane, happy, and willing to get out of bed in the morning. Part of that ignorance is a blind spot we each possess that obscures both our competence and incompetence called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It's a psychological phenomenon that arises sometimes in your life because you are generally very bad at self-assessment. If you have ever been confronted with the fact that you were in over your head, or that you had no idea what you were doing, or that you thought you were more skilled at something than you actually were – then you may have experienced this effect. It is very easy to be both unskilled and unaware of it, and in this episode we explore why that is with professor David Dunning, one of the researchers who coined the term and a scientist who continues to add to our understanding of the phenomenon.• Show Notes: youarenotsosmart.com• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart• Donate Directly through PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/DavidMcRaneyPatreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Transcript

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0:00.0	Me. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.
0:27.0	Episode 192. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, and do me. The problem for some of those people is they're incompetent and they don't have the
0:49.9	expertise to realize that the strategy they've chosen has a lot of problems with it
0:54.8	because they literally lack the expertise to be able to recognize those problems.
0:58.4	If they had that expertise at the very least they'd be asking for advice from other people.
1:05.0	So incompetent people are in a special situation where it's down that they don't recognize their lack of skill and it's not that they're denying
1:17.9	their lack of skill.
1:18.9	They're not in a position to make the call correctly.
1:22.1	They're not in a position to realize just how badly they're doing.
1:25.0	That is Dr David Dunning explaining the Dunning-Kruger effect from an episode going all the way back to six years ago. That's right, six years ago.
1:36.0	So I'm working on a very big episode right now about persuasion and as so you know this is a one-person operation and I needed some time to finish that episode.
1:46.0	So in this episode, we returned to a show from six years ago that really established the sort of guests I wanted to feature because not only is this an
1:54.4	episode about the Dunning-Cruger effect the guest is Dr David Dunning himself who
1:59.1	along with Justin Krueger conducted the study that coined the term way back in 1999. What is the Dunning-Cruger effect?
2:08.0	Well, in a nutshell, it's the fact that all human beings are unaware that we lack the skill to tell how unskilled and
2:15.8	unaware we are. The evidence suggests that we all have this complicated
2:20.6	relationship with our own ignorance.
2:29.0	And it's dishonest, it's complicated, but it keeps us sane and happy and willing to get out of bed in the morning. And part of that relationship is this blind spot we each possess that obscures both our
2:34.4	competence and incompetence and we call it the Dunning-Kruger effect and as you will
2:38.8	hear from Dr Dunning we are generally very bad at self-assessment.
2:43.0	That's what it comes down to.
2:44.6	So if you've ever been confronted with the fact that you were in over your head,
	...

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