When was the last time when someone asked you to rate yourself on a particular skill? It’s a fairly common question that’s asked in a job interview to assess the potential candidate's self-confidence. It’s surprising to witness that many people tend to overestimate their skills more often than not. There’s a scientific term for this and it’s known as Illusory superiority or superiority bias. And, the Dunning Kruger effect is based on Illusory superiority.
In social psychology, illusory superiority is a condition of cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their qualities and abilities concerning the same attributes and skills of other people. — Wikipedia
So, what is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
In simple terms, the Dunning-Kruger effect is defined as a cognitive bias in which people with low abilities at a given task try to over-estimate themselves. It was first published in a study titled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
In a study conducted by Dunning and Kruger on undergraduate students in regards with their intellectual skills (Logical Reasoning, Sense of Humor and English grammar) they found that students who scored less (12th percentile) in the test conducted when asked about their expectations, over-estimated their scores to a staggering 62nd percentile. On the contrary, students who performed well under-estimated themselves because they presumed that the tasks which seemed natural to them would also be easy to others.
This over-estimation of skills can turn out to be a problem in the long-run and would likely hinder our ability to learn, improve, and grow. So, how could we use the Dunning-Kruger effect to our advantage?
The answer is — “by being more self-aware of our capabilities and skills.” Self-awareness helps us break out of our assumptions and will provide a direction for our growth and improvement. It will help us re-evaluate our belief system concerning our skills and “update” ourselves over time. The biggest differentiator when it comes to people who are experts in their domain, and someone is who is mediocre is the lack of awareness and curiosity. This is also called a lack of metacognition.
Self-awareness is indeed a much-needed reality check.
Now, the next immediate question would be — how do we become more self-aware of our skills?
The tried and tested approach that I found to be most effective is “Spaced evaluation.” Spaced evaluation is basically to evaluate one’s skills consistently by applying any evaluation techniques, be it taking a mini-quiz or having a peer to peer discussions revolving around your expertise. This approach has two additional benefits:
- Helps to identify gaps that need improvement
- Helps in garnering a growth mindset
Besides being self-aware, seeking constructive criticism and looking for ways to question one’s abilities in a holistic approach is the right way to go. William Shakespeare and Confucius said it best:
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” — Confucius
