Do you know anyone like this?

1. The person who’s never had a baby, never looked after a baby, never even held a baby, who gives you advice on how to feed your baby, get it to sleep – and it’s your third baby
2. The passenger in your car who has never learnt how to drive, does not own a car, yet still gives you their advice on how to drive
3. The colleague at work who thinks he is a top performer yet never reaches his targets and consistently receives poor reviews

From time to time, we can all suffer from the condition of not knowing what we don’t know, however, the people above may be suffering from something else – The Dunning-Kruger effect.

Dr David Dunning and Dr Justin Kruger developed their theory in 1999 whilst at Cornell University.  They described a phenomenon whereby many of the people who are the least knowledgeable about something nonetheless believe that they are among the most informed and knowledgeable.  The essence of the Dunning-Kruger theory is that “incompetent individuals lack the metacognitive skills that enable them to tell how poorly they are performing, and as a result, they come to hold inflated views of their performance and ability” (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). 

Over the course of four studies, Dunning and Kruger found that those who were below average in a skill, lacked the competence to recognise their incompetence.  However, they are likely to feel confident that they actually are competent

According to Dunning and Kruger, it is ignorance that lies behind a great deal of incompetence.  Through a number of studies discussed in their paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self Assessments” (Kruger and Dunning, 1999), they showed that incompetent people tend to:

• Overestimate their own abilities,
  • Fail to recognise genuine ability in others, and
  • Fail to recognise the sheer extent of their incompetence.

To put it another way, the most incompetent individuals are the ones that are most convinced of their competence.  Or as Charles Darwin once said, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge”.

The unfortunate flip-side of this is that those who are most competent often underestimate their competence.  Research conducted by Kruger and Dunning (1999) showed that those who are skilled tend to under-rate their own abilities because they are keenly aware of how much they don’t know and therefore may lack confidence at times. 

For example, the person who can name 2 of the 7 dwarves tends to think, “I know 2”.  Those who know 6 of the 7 dwarves tend to think, “I don’t know 1”.  That is, the more you know, the more you focus on what you don’t know (May, 2007). 

As Dunning notes, the irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that “the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognise that one is not good at that task—and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task” (Murphy, 2017)

So what does all this mean in the work context?

One of the most important distinctions to make is that confidence does NOT equal competence. 

In the work environment, if a manager does not closely supervise work, it is possible that he or she may judge performance on outward appearances using information such as the confidence with which one speaks about their performance, which evidence shows is not related to competence (May, 2007).

And given that research shows that the most competent people tend to underestimate their ability, it is imperative that managers show confidence in their best employees, even when they don’t necessarily have confidence in themselves.

The implications of the Dunning-Kruger effect in the workplace and what you can do about them

1. In the recruitment context

• Don’t be swayed by a candidate’s projected confidence and assume that they have the competence to do the job.  This is one of those unconscious biases that we need to avoid.  One way to do this is to ensure that you ask structured, behavioural questions in the interview which require the candidate to tell you about a time when they demonstrated competence in a particular area. 

2. Training

• Competence needs to be assessed and re-assessed.  When employees have completed a training program, don’t assume that they are now fully competent in that area even if they seem very confident in their ability.  Assess them on their competence.  And assess them again in six or twelve months’ time.  Get feedback from other people who work with them.

3. Performance review

• Use a number of measurable performance standards and have concrete performance goals that are difficult to refute.  
• Offer training and development in those areas in which performance is poor.  It is possible that many people are underperforming simply because they don’t know that they could be doing better or what really great performance looks like.  It’s not that they’re necessarily being defensive, rather they just lack the knowledge to know what they don’t know.

The good news is that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not necessarily permanent.  With time, training and feedback, some studies have shown that the unskilled and unaware problem can be resolved.  That is, people can recognise and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill if they are exposed to training for that skill (Kruger and Dunning, 1999).

Finally, some wise words to consider:

“The only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing.” (Socrates)

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” (Confucius)

References

Kruger, J. and Dunning, D. (1999).  Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134. 

May, R. (2007).  Why the Dunning-Kruger Effect is Ruining Your Business. 

Murphy, M. (2017).  The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They’re Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible.