1+1: Beware the Dunning-Kruger Effect + Experts vs Imitators

Here's one leadership idea and one resource I’ve found beneficial in the past two weeks:

1 idea: Beware the Dunning-Kruger Effect

18 years ago, I stood in the aisle of an Auto Zone trying to make a simple decision: which kind of windshield scraper should I buy?

For the first time in my life, I was living somewhere other than Texas. Having just relocated to Fort Wayne, Indiana, I was trying to prepare for the big winter that my Midwestern friends warned me about. After awaking to morning frost on my Toyota 4Runner a few times that fall, I figured it was time to buy my first ice scraper—something I’d rarely needed in my subtropical homeland.

As I surveyed the options, I was confused. I quickly found the scraper I was looking for: a 10-inch tool that could easily handle the frost I'd been seeing. But alongside these "normal" scrapers was a gaudy monstrosity I'd never seen before. These scrapers looked like giant toothbrushes that had been fashioned into weapons by desperate prison inmates. As I walked out with my $6 scraper, I chuckled at how absurd these overblown scrapers were.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d just fallen victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect—one of the most common cognitive biases. As the Dunning-Kruger Effect explains, the less someone knows about a topic, the more confident they are in their own opinions. 

Social media shines a spotlight on this bias. People who have never run for office confidently explain the motives of elected officials. Guys who barely passed high school biology transform into epidemiologists. Folks who don’t know astrology from astronomy explain the real shape of the Earth to the rest of the noobs online.

The truth is that confidence is often a sign of ignorance, not intelligence. Experts often answer questions with "it depends" for this reason. Because they understand the complexity of their subject, they weigh the variables before asserting strong opinions. They know that life often defies easy answers. They know what they don't know. 

That day when I walked out of Auto Zone, I was completely confident that I’d made the right choice—so confident that I felt no need to ask any native Hoosiers why one of these long brushes might be a good idea. Instead, I found out for myself a few months later when we received three inches of snow. That morning, I stood out in the snow for 15 minutes trying to clean off my huge hood with a tiny scraper. Meanwhile, my toothbrush-wielding friends swept away the snow with ease. Had I asked a few questions before making my purchase, I could have saved myself some frozen fingers. To ask the question though, I needed to be humbler and pause to consider what I might not know.

Don’t be the idiot with the tiny scraper. Combat the Dunning-Kruger Effect with a dose of intellectual humility.

***

• Where might the Dunning-Kruger Effect be playing out in your life right now?

• What would a bit more intellectual humility look like in those situations?

• What resources could help you burst that bubble of false confidence and develop a more informed opinion?

1 resource: Experts vs Imitators

If you are trying to determine whether somebody really knows what they’re talking about (or is simply very confident), Shane Parrish’s distinctions between Experts and Imitators are a helpful place to start. 

PS: How Disney imitates ghosts.