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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychology-of-the-breathtakingly-stupid-mistake/


The Psychology of the Breathtakingly Stupid Mistake: New research suggests there are three distinct types of action that bring palm to face By David Z. Hambrick on February 23, 2016 SEE END FOR CLOSE


We all make stupid mistakes from time to time. History is replete with examples. Legend has it that the Trojans accepted the Greek’s “gift” of a huge wooden horse, which turned out to be hollow and filled with Greek arsonists. The Tower of Pisa started to lean even before construction was finished—and is not even the world’s farthest leaning tower. NASA taped over the original recordings of the moon landing, and operatives for Richard Nixon’s re-election committee were caught breaking into a Watergate office, setting in motion the greatest political scandal in U.S. history. More recently, the French government spent $15 billion on a fleet of new trains, only to discover that they were too wide for some 1,300 station platforms.

We readily recognize these incidents as stupid mistakes—epic blunders. On a more mundane level, we invest in get-rich-quick schemes, drive too fast, and make posts on social media that we later regret. But what, exactly, drives our perception of these actions as stupid mistakes, as opposed to bad luck? Their seeming mindlessness? The severity of the consequences? The responsibility of the people involved? Science can help us answer these questions.

V In a study just published in the journal Intelligence, using search terms such as “stupid thing to do”, Balazs Aczel and his colleagues compiled a collection of stories describing stupid mistakes from sources such as The Huffington Post and TMZ. One story described a thief who broke into a house and stole a TV and later returned for the remote; another described burglars who intended to steal cell phones but instead stole GPS tracking devices that were turned on and gave police their exact location. The researchers then had a sample of university students rate each story on the responsibility of the people involved, the influence of the situation, the seriousness of the consequences, and other factors.

The confidence-skill disconnect has been dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect, after a study by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Dunning and Kruger had Cornell undergraduates perform tests of humor, logic, and grammar, and then rate how well they think they performed compared to other subjects in the study. The worst performing subjects, whose scores put them in the 12th percentile, estimated that they had performed in the 62nd percentile. Summarizing the findings, Dunning noted, “Poor performers—and we are all poor performers at some things—fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack.” When we think we are at our best is sometimes when we are at our objective worst.

Dunning–Kruger effect From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability have illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority derives from the metacognitive inability of low-ability persons to recognize their own ineptitude; without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

Conversely, highly competent individuals may erroneously assume that tasks easy for them to perform are also easy for other people to perform, or that other people will have a similar understanding of subjects that they themselves are well-versed in.[2]



As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1]

Original study: The psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority was identified as a form of cognitive bias in Kruger and Dunning's 1999 study "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments".[1] The identification derived from the cognitive bias evident in the criminal case of McArthur Wheeler, who robbed banks with his face covered with lemon juice, which he believed would make it invisible to the surveillance cameras. This belief was based on his misunderstanding of the chemical properties of lemon juice as an invisible ink.[3]

Other investigations of the phenomenon, such as "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence" (2003), indicate that much incorrect self-assessment of competence derives from the person's ignorance of a given activity's standards of performance.[4] Dunning and Kruger's research also indicates that training in a task, such as solving a logic puzzle, increases people's ability to accurately evaluate how good they are at it.[5]

In Self-insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (2005), Dunning described the Dunning–Kruger effect as "the anosognosia of everyday life", referring to the condition in which a disabled person either denies or seems unaware of his or her disability. He stated: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is."[6]

Sequel studies: Dunning and Kruger tested the hypotheses of the cognitive bias of illusory superiority on undergraduate students of introductory courses in psychology, by examining the students' self-assessments of their intellectual skills in logical reasoning  (inductive,  deductive,  abductive), English grammar, and personal sense of humor. After learning their self-assessment scores, the students were asked to estimate their ranks in the psychology class. The group of competent students underestimated their class ranks, while the group of incompetent students overestimated their ranks; yet the incompetent group did not estimate their class ranks as higher than the ranks estimated by the competent group. Across four studies, the research indicated that the study participants who scored in the bottom quartile on tests of their sense of humor, knowledge of grammar, and logical reasoning overestimated their test performance and their abilities; despite test scores that placed them in the 12th percentile, the participants estimated they ranked in the 62nd percentile.[1][8]

Moreover, competent students tended to underestimate their own competence, because they erroneously presumed that tasks easy for them to perform were also easy for other people to perform. Incompetent students improved their ability to correctly estimate their class rank after receiving minimal tutoring in the skills they previously lacked, regardless of any objective improvement gained in said skills of perception.[1] The study Mind-Reading and Metacognition: Narcissism, not Actual Competence, Predicts Self-estimated Ability (2004) extended the cognitive-bias premise of illusory superiority to test the subjects' emotional sensitivity toward other people and their perceptions of other people.[9]

The study How Chronic Self-Views Influence (and Potentially Mislead) Estimates of Performance (2003) indicated a shift in the participants' view of themselves when influenced by external cues. The participants' knowledge of geography was tested; some tests were intended to positively affect the participant's self-view and some were intended to affect it negatively. The participants then were asked to rate their performances; the participants given tests with a positive intent reported better performance than did the participants given tests with a negative intent.[10]

To test Dunning and Kruger’s hypotheses, "that people, at all performance levels, are equally poor at estimating their relative performance", the study Skilled or Unskilled, but Still Unaware of It: How Perceptions of Difficulty Drive Miscalibration in Relative Comparisons (2006) investigated three studies that manipulated the "perceived difficulty of the tasks, and, hence, [the] participants' beliefs about their relative standing". The investigation indicated that when the experimental subjects were presented with moderately difficult tasks, there was little variation among the best performers and the worst performers in their ability to accurately predict their performance. With more difficult tasks, the best performers were less accurate in predicting their performance than were the worst performers. Therefore, judges at all levels of skill are subject to similar degrees of error in the performance of tasks.[2]

In testing alternative explanations for the cognitive bias of illusory superiority, the study Why the Unskilled are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-insight Among the Incompetent (2008) reached the same conclusions as previous studies of the Dunning–Kruger effect: that, in contrast to high performers, "poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve".[11]

Cultural differences in self-perception: Studies of the Dunning–Kruger effect usually have been of North Americans, but studies of Japanese people suggest that cultural forces have a role in the occurrence of the effect.[14] The study Divergent Consequences of Success and Failure in Japan and North America: An Investigation of Self-improving Motivations and Malleable Selves (2001) indicated that Japanese people tended to underestimate their abilities, and tended to see underachievement (failure) as an opportunity to improve their abilities at a given task, thereby increasing their value to the social group.[15]

Popular recognition: In 2000, Kruger and Dunning were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize, in satirical recognition of the scientific work recorded in "their modest report".[16] "The Dunning-Kruger Song" is part of The Incompetence Opera,[18] a mini-opera that premiered at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in 2017.[19] The mini-opera is billed as "a musical encounter with the Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger Effect".[20]

Historical antecedents: Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was formulated in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority has been known throughout history and identified by intellectuals, such as:



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Conversely, highly competent individuals may erroneously assume that tasks easy for them to perform are also easy for other people to perform, or that other people will have a similar understanding of subjects that they themselves are well-versed in.[2]

As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."[1]

Original study: The psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority was identified as a form of cognitive bias in Kruger and Dunning's 1999 study "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments".[1] The identification derived from the cognitive bias evident in the criminal case of McArthur Wheeler, who robbed banks with his face covered with lemon juice, which he believed would make it invisible to the surveillance cameras. This belief was based on his misunderstanding of the chemical properties of lemon juice as an invisible ink.[3]

Other investigations of the phenomenon, such as "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence" (2003), indicate that much incorrect self-assessment of competence derives from the person's ignorance of a given activity's standards of performance.[4] Dunning and Kruger's research also indicates that training in a task, such as solving a logic puzzle, increases people's ability to accurately evaluate how good they are at it.[5]

In Self-insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (2005), Dunning described the Dunning–Kruger effect as "the anosognosia of everyday life", referring to the condition in which a disabled person either denies or seems unaware of his or her disability. He stated: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is."[6]

Sequel studies: Dunning and Kruger tested the hypotheses of the cognitive bias of illusory superiority on undergraduate students of introductory courses in psychology, by examining the students' self-assessments of their intellectual skills in logical reasoning  (inductive,  deductive,  abductive), English grammar, and personal sense of humor. After learning their self-assessment scores, the students were asked to estimate their ranks in the psychology class. The group of competent students underestimated their class ranks, while the group of incompetent students overestimated their ranks; yet the incompetent group did not estimate their class ranks as higher than the ranks estimated by the competent group. Across four studies, the research indicated that the study participants who scored in the bottom quartile on tests of their sense of humor, knowledge of grammar, and logical reasoning overestimated their test performance and their abilities; despite test scores that placed them in the 12th percentile, the participants estimated they ranked in the 62nd percentile.[1][8]

Moreover, competent students tended to underestimate their own competence, because they erroneously presumed that tasks easy for them to perform were also easy for other people to perform. Incompetent students improved their ability to correctly estimate their class rank after receiving minimal tutoring in the skills they previously lacked, regardless of any objective improvement gained in said skills of perception.[1] The study Mind-Reading and Metacognition: Narcissism, not Actual Competence, Predicts Self-estimated Ability (2004) extended the cognitive-bias premise of illusory superiority to test the subjects' emotional sensitivity toward other people and their perceptions of other people.[9]

The study  How Chronic Self-Views Influence (and Potentially Mislead) Estimates of Performance (2003) indicated a shift in the participants' view of themselves when influenced by external cues. The participants' knowledge of geography was tested; some tests were intended to positively affect the participant's self-view and some were intended to affect it negatively. The participants then were asked to rate their performances; the participants given tests with a positive intent reported better performance than did the participants given tests with a negative intent.[10]

To test Dunning and Kruger’s hypotheses, "that people, at all performance levels, are equally poor at estimating their relative performance", the study  Skilled or Unskilled, but Still Unaware of It: How Perceptions of Difficulty Drive Miscalibration in Relative Comparisons (2006) investigated three studies that manipulated the "perceived difficulty of the tasks, and, hence, [the] participants' beliefs about their relative standing". The investigation indicated that when the experimental subjects were presented with moderately difficult tasks, there was little variation among the best performers and the worst performers in their ability to accurately predict their performance. With more difficult tasks, the best performers were less accurate in predicting their performance than were the worst performers. Therefore, judges at all levels of skill are subject to similar degrees of error in the performance of tasks.[2]

In testing alternative explanations for the cognitive bias of illusory superiority, the study Why the Unskilled are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-insight Among the Incompetent (2008) reached the same conclusions as previous studies of the Dunning–Kruger effect: that, in contrast to high performers, "poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve".[11] n

Underlying issues of Numeracy: Two unique papers in Numeracy reveal problems with the graphic introduced in the 1999 Kruger and Dunning paper.[12][13] Subsequent researchers used it, (y-x) versus (x) scatter plots, and related variants for nearly two decades. The authors show how a major part of the body of literature that used these approaches seem to have mistaken and interpreted mathematical artifacts as the products of human behavior. The two papers employed paired, well-aligned instruments of known reliability to examine the evaluation of self-assessment measures from the perspective of signal and noise. They show how the mathematical problems inherent in the Kruger-Dunning type graph can be overcome by other kinds of graphing that attenuate noise or employ categorical data from known novices and experts. When artifacts are eliminated, the evidence is strong that humans are generally correct in their self-assessments, with only a small percent of the participants who were studied exhibiting performance that might merit the label "unskilled and unaware of it." The authors' findings refute the claim that humans, in general, are prone to having greatly inflated views of their abilities, but they support two other tenets of the original Kruger and Dunning research: (1) self-assessment skills can be learned and (2) experts usually self-assess themselves with better accuracy than do novices. The researchers noted that metacognitive self-assessment skill is of great value, and it can be taught together with any disciplinary content in college courses.

Cultural differences in self-perception: Studies of the Dunning–Kruger effect usually have been of North Americans, but studies of Japanese people suggest that cultural forces have a role in the occurrence of the effect.[14] The study Divergent Consequences of Success and Failure in Japan and North America: An Investigation of Self-improving Motivations and Malleable Selves (2001) indicated that Japanese people tended to underestimate their abilities, and tended to see underachievement (failure) as an opportunity to improve their abilities at a given task, thereby increasing their value to the social group.[15]

Popular recognition: In 2000, Kruger and Dunning were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize, in satirical recognition of the scientific work recorded in "their modest report".[16] "The Dunning-Kruger Song"[17] is part of The Incompetence Opera,[18] a mini-opera that premiered at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in 2017.[19] The mini-opera is billed as "a musical encounter with the Peter Principle and the Dunning-Kruger Effect".[20]

Historical antecedents: Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was formulated in 1999, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority has been known throughout history and identified by intellectuals, such as: