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David Dunning: Overcoming Overconfidence
Podcast

David Dunning: Overcoming Overconfidence

Dunning, co-discoverer of the Dunning-Kruger effect, investigates the misinformation gap built into our brains: We don’t know what we don’t know.

David Dunning and Corey S. Powell
OpenMind Magazine, 2024
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The Dunning-Kruger effect — a phenomenon that is often oversimplified to “stupid people don’t know they’re stupid” — has become a popular meme, retort, and insult, particularly in online debates. But even people who boast extreme intelligence in one field can be blind to their ignorance in another. In this frank interview with journalist Corey S. Powell, social scientist David Dunning explains how he and his colleague Justin Kruger researched their hypothesis, and he corrects common misunderstandings about the theory. Dunning urges individuals and institutions to become more self-aware of their limitations.

Summary

The Dunning-Kruger effect prompts all people to be more cognizant of their ignorance. 

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that plagues all people, regardless of intelligence. It’s the force at play when casual wine drinkers believe themselves to be connoisseurs. The theory posits that nonexperts in a given subject lack the expertise to recognize the depth of their ignorance. Most people are well-versed in no more than a handful of fields, but a little knowledge of a subject cultivates hubris that conceals people’s blind spots from themselves. For example, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Richard Epstein, a law professor with some basic knowledge in evolutionary biology and mathematics, designed a model estimating that the United States would see just 500–5,000 cases of COVID-19. He had drifted beyond his zone of expertise — an act known as “epistemic trespassing” — and didn’t know what he didn’t know. 

The road to mastery requires fostering a beginner’s mindset and accepting that, in life, you will always be a novice and never a “...

About the Podcast

Social psychologist David Dunning co-authored the 1999 paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, which introduced the hypothesis now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. His current research at the University of Michigan examines belief and trust. Corey S. Powell is the co-editor at OpenMind, a nonprofit organization that aims to debunk scientific myths.

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