The Cook
Gregg is a nice guy. He likes to cook, so anyone who visits him, never leaves his apartment hungry. He loves buying expensive gadgets over the internet, but after using them few times, they are usually laid to rest in one of the kitchen’s cabinets. If device happens to be huge, it is given away to some random folks or, in the worst case - dumped. When people ask him why he does so, he says that it started boring him, because he has achieved a mastery in using it. “It is not a challenge no more” he used to say. “I’m already a sushi master, I’ve done it twice, so I need to move on, and learn something new”, and after saying that, he starts looking for some new excitement.
A Step Too Far
Brenda loves to hike. She walks about a kilometer per day, what makes her very proud. She never forgets to inform all
friends on a social media, that once again she made 1500 steps from home to the office and back. She is fond of a sport
fashion, so trendy and expensive clothes are a must. Maybe sometimes too expensive, but hey, real athletes dress like
this, so it must be the reason of their success, right?
During one of her walks, she decided that this is the right time to achieve something bigger. Walking such a big distance every day is, of course, a big deal, but why not to try something really huge. Like climbing the highest mountain within 500-kilometer radius from her place. What could possibly go wrong, trainings five days a week made her tough and durable. It’s now or never, she took a few day vacation and travelled to Mount Big-Enough, two hours by train, so not too far.
When she arrived, she took a cab, which drove her to the foot of the mountain. On the way there, they were passing some people equipped with backpacks, crampons and helmets, wearing high boots and funny beanies with silly pompoms. “It’s funny, why all those people are carrying all this gear?” she thought. “If you’re not tough enough, no equipment will help you, it’s so lame”. It made her better than all these funny-looking pseudo mountaineers, her confidence and self-esteem were just skyrocketing. “I will show you the meaning of climbing!” Brena cried loudly, what really scared a taxi driver, almost causing an accident.
Right after taxi driver dropped her off, she started marching to the top of the mountain. The energy she felt inside was driving her, she was walking fast and full of power. First few hundred meters were easy, the road wasn’t too steep. The problems showed up, when the road transformed into the narrow path with massive stones forming some kind of stairs. Steps she had to make were big enough, to drain all of her power in few minutes. She started breathing heavily, her legs became heavy, and her clothes were soaked in sweat. She couldn’t believe in what was happening, she was in such a good shape! “One kilometer per day is a thing, I’m the champion, a hiking machine”. How could this have happened? This “hill” is not even 500 meters high, distance like this is a piece of cake. She sat on the only bench around and started wondering, how this all could have happened.
Meanwhile, it got dark. She realized that no one is around, and it’s freezing. It was high time to come back, but the night was moonless, pitch black, so walking down the rocky road was dangerous and risky. No flashlight, a torch or even box of matches - there was no way to illuminate the road and make it possible to get back. All she was carrying was a cell phone. She dialed a Mountain Rescue Team number, and when the man on the other end picked up the phone, he could hear Brenda’s voice, saying: “Hello? I think I’m gonna need some help…”.
A Handyman
Since he was a child, Peter always loved to help others. Walking neighbour’s dog, make groceries for the grandma, holding flashlight for the dad when he was repairing car - everybody around could count on him. All these activities are generally quite easy to do, and rather hard to fail, so the young man was sure, that he can help anyone with anything.
It was a rainy and cold November morning, when Peter was on the way to his work. He was hired as a junior fork-lift driver in a warehouse nearby his home. Because he wasn’t an experienced employee, he wasn’t allowed to operate on a full height of the mast. It’s typical for beginners to handle truck unloading, where heights are not significant. When driver becomes more experienced, he’s then allowed to handle high storage. As for the Peter, he still needed a lot of training.
On this special day, our forklift trainee was the only one who showed up, the rest of the team called it sick. Lucky for him, there was only one, not so-big truck to unload - two hours, and I’m done - he thought. When he was in the middle, the supervisor came to him. “Hey, Peter, right?” - he asked. Listen, I know that all senior drivers called it sick today, but there is one, small thing I need to fetch from the highest rack. You think, you could help me with that? If not, then I can call some guy from our back-up crew and make it done. What do you think? “No problem!” - he answered. In his mind it was an easy task, he couldn’t anticipate what could go wrong.
He moved near the rack where the load was laying and lifted tynes up. Then, he carefully slipped them into the palette and moved towards the edge of a shelf. And then, the worst thing happened. The vehicle suddenly moved forward and hit the rack, making it fall over. The falling construction stroke another one and half of the racks in the warehouse felt down like domino. It was a catastrophy. What was the cause of it? Well, Peter mistakenly used a steering stick responsible for moving forward the forklift itself, not the tynes. He obviously overestimated his skills, what eventually led his company to bankruptcy. Thankfully nobody got hurt.
Different Stories, Different People, Same Phenomenon
You may wonder what the heck is wrong with those three? Are they crazy? Or dumb? Well, not necessarily. They all experience a type of cognitive bias which makes them believe they are smarter and more capable than they really are. It is called a Dunning-Kruger effect, a phenomenon which makes low ability people blind for their incompetence and lack of skills.
The people behind the effect’s name are the researchers who first described it: David Dunning and Justin Kruger. In their study, two psychologists performed a number of investigations to make their point.
Experiments
To conduct one of their experiments, Dunning and Kruger have gathered a group of a few dozen people, and presented them a number of jokes. Then, participants were asked to rate how funny jokes were. Some of them totally missed those which make other people laugh, but still described themselves as joke experts.
Another experiment was a tricky one. Our researchers asked their subjects if they are familiar with a bunch of terms related to wide range of disciplines like biology, politics or science. The interesting fact is, that among genuine definitions they placed a totally made-up ones. The result of this study was astonishing, 90% of respondents claimed that they know about the comprised phrases. Even more surprising is a fact, that the more confident the participant felt in a particular topic, the more eager he was to express his familiarity with a fabricated definition.
The last interesting study I’d like to mention, is one where Dunning and Ehrlinger conducted a science quiz on a group of men and women. When participants were asked to try to anticipate their results, feminine participants underestimated their performance. It was caused by their belief, that women are generally worse when it comes to scientific reasoning. Researcher also have noticed, that these females are less likely to join a science competition.
A Dual Burden
It turns out that incompetent people are not only incompetent, their lack of capability makes it impossible for them to realize, how much knowledge they lack. They tend to overestimate the level of their own skills, just like they are unable to estimate expertise of other people. Inability to recognize their own fails and mistakes makes them ignorant, what keeps them in the state of permanent mediocrity. What is even worse, people experiencing this syndrome are unable to take step back and observe their own behaviour from the perspective different from their own. It makes them believe their skills, knowledge and experience are far superior to others.
Have you ever met someone like Gregg? A person who gets a bit of knowledge in any matter, and acts like an expert? He or she believes that article, 5-minute tutorial or quick chat on the conference is more than enough to know everything about the particular subject? They like to call themselves geniuses, brains, real masterminds. They believe that every, even the most complex problem, can be solved in no time with a minimum effort, by barely scratching a surface. Taking mental shortcuts all the time, making quick decisions, act-before-you-think attitude - all these signs indicate, that DK effect is in its prime.
Victims
I’m quite sure that some questions arose in your head. Am I affected? I’m afraid the answer is positive, but don’t get miserable, because we are all in it. Look, it doesn’t matter how good you are in the programming, algorithms or machine learning, because there are tons of areas where you are uninformed and unskilled. Despite being smart, bright and intelligent, you cannot be a master in everything, I will even risk a statement, that this is physically impossible. That’s because your brain has limited capacity (no matter how efficient this is) and you won’t live forever.
Individuals with knowledge, experience, the capable ones, have tendencies to believe that together with their intelligence they are experts even in areas they are less familiar with. Think of a brilliant chemist, a respected and titled scientist, sharp-minded inventor with extraordinary talent who considers himself as a genius chef. Why? Because he knows how to read recipes, he mixes different matters and use a temperature to achieve his goals, so how is it different from cooking a meal? With such a belief it’s very hard to recognize one’s poor performance, especially when it is about us.
Heroes Without Capes
Incompetent folks think they are experts, but what about authentic specialists, what’s in their minds? According to Dunning and Kruger findings, they are definitely more down to earth when compared to their syndrome-affected counterparts. They are not only more realistic when it comes to judge their knowledge and capabilities, it’s not uncommon for them to underestimate their proficiency. Furthermore, despite being the top-scoring individuals, these people have tendencies to have lack of faith in their superiority. In most cases they are aware how capable they are, but it creates a problem which resides on the other end - they believe that everyone is as skilled and knowledgeable as they are, what may lead to some unrealistic expectations, and in the end, to conflicts.
The Cure
How can we fight with this syndrome, is it curable, does the remedy exist? Will affected people eventually see their incompetence and lack of skills, will they experience the grace of enlightenment? According to Dunning and Kruger, there is hope, they suggest that as experience in a particular subject increases, the confidence drops to more rational level. When one dives deep into the topic, symptoms of overconfidence slowly disappear making ground for ability to recognize one’s lack of competences. Luckily, people don’t get stuck in this phase, because as their knowledge and level of expertise grows, the confidence level increases too.
How can we overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect? In my opinion, the most important thing to do, is to always question your knowledge. Do not assume that what you know now will always be valid or legitimate. Whenever possible, try to confront your knowledge, constantly validate your beliefs and attack your ideas to the moment they are not defensible. Never assume that something is once and for all, written in stone. A few centuries ago people believed that the Earth is the center of the universe, but then one guy came and proved otherwise. Who would have thought?
Confronting and validating one’s knowledge will naturally lead to more learning and practising. When it comes to IT industry, you cannot just scratch a little and pretend you haven’t uncovered anything new. There is always another layer of facts, logic and lower-level components which are foundation for the topic you’ve just touched. It will also help you realize how much more there is to learn, you will notice that one door opens another, and so on. Being an expert means opening a lot of door.
These two methods require some self-discipline, but the last one, on the other hand, will require a lot of courage. The best way to ensure you’re not falling into self-adoration, is to ask other people for feedback. You go to your teammates, and ask for some honest opinion on how you are doing. Sure, sometimes it may be difficult, but remember that constructive criticism is a helping hand, not a kick in the face.
I Got One In My Team, How To Deal?
If you want to help DK’ed person to fight the syndrome (this is what you want, to help), you have to start with yourself, it is crucial to have a right attitude before you do anything. First and foremost you have to keep in mind, that this individual is not stupid, dumb or brainless. If you think in such categories, please, stop judging and focus on solving a problem. Be respectful and compassionate, don’t forget that we all are infected with this nasty virus. Who knows, maybe some day it will be him or her coming to your desk to have a discussion about your symptoms?
The best way to deal with people blinded with overconfidence, is to use a breadcrumb strategy. Instead of trying to feed them with one, huge loaf of bread, it’s better to make a path from its tiny pieces which are easier to swallow. People experiencing a DK effect are usually very fragile, pointing out their incompetence makes them angry and strengthen their self-righteousness. Your task is to ask a series of questions, so they can reach a final conclusion all by themselves. Don’t be pushy, let them take their time, one tiny step after another. If you play it smart, they will not even notice that it was you, who opened their eyes, they will credit themselves for this spectacular discovery. And this is good, it’s not a matter of who did what or how, the important thing is helping someone to improve.
You have to keep in mind, that this method may not help at all, it can even make things worse. Person you try to help, may have even stronger faith in his or her capabilities and skills, the bridge leading to enlightenment may collapse. If it happens to be like this, don’t be too hard on yourself, you did your best. At least you’ve tried.