Aren’t You Smart? Overconfidence in our Thinking

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell

Get That Money

It was a normal April day in Pittsburgh, people were going about their business and suddenly in the Swissvale branch of Mellon Bank, two armed robbers walked in.

A bank robbery is not so strange, what was strange was that this person had no mask. They had made no attempt to disguise how they looked. They just waltzed in like they had a plan.

They did have a plan, but it was a terrible one.

The not-so-professional criminals thought they had a plan so cunning, so incredibly intelligent that it was basically foolproof.

Fool is the word we want to concentrate on here.

The footage of the crimes was given to local nightly news, and within minutes tips started to roll in.

The Police were outside the suspect’s door within an hour, giving it a gentle knock. McArthur Wheeler couldn’t believe he was found.

His explanation for his surprise? “I wore the juice.“

Let’s Get Juicy

Wheeler was told by his fellow bank robber, Clifton Earl Johnson, that lemon juice would make you invisible to security cameras. The same way that lemon juice can be used as invisible ink.

Now Wheeler is no idiot, he did some tests. He put lemon juice on himself and took a Polaroid photo and he was missing from the image.

The police think it was either bad film, something wrong with the camera, or Wheeler missed his face from the photo.

The result is that he believed Johnson and so a bank robbing they did go.

The Effect

A Cornell psychology Professor, David Dunning, read about the tale in the 1996 World Almanac. The story held an interesting observation for him that he wanted to test.

Dunning along with graduate student, Justin Kruger, conducted several experiments to test the idea that people most lacking in knowledge and skills are least able to appreciate that lack. This would become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The tests were on grammar, logic, and comedy. The students who scored the lowest greatly exaggerated how well they did in the tests. These people thought they were going to be in the top third of the students.

Another interesting finding was that those who scored the highest slightly underestimated their ability relative to others.

This all makes sense, if you are doing a maths test, you have to know the content of the test to understand how well you did. If you didn’t understand it, then you wouldn’t be able to accurately assess your knowledge.

Their ignorance made them unable to judge their performance.

It Starts In The Mirror

The Dunning-Kruger effect is very funny. Silly people doing silly things.

John Cleese explained it as  “If you’re very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you’re very, very stupid? You’d have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are….And this explains not just Hollywood but almost the entirety of Fox News.” 

You need to have some knowledge of the field to gauge your own ability but not enough to see your own ignorance.

In their 1999 paper, where they first published the results, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” the authors made it clear that they first place to look for the Dunning-Kruger effect is in the mirror.

It is Good to Know

Now that you know that a little knowledge can be dangerous, it helps us as leaders be aware of our shortcomings.

It is OK to feel out of your element when new ideas and tools come along. You don’t have to know how everything works or be the best at everything.

A coach might have all the knowledge of strategy and fundamentals for basketball, but they can’t run and jump as their players. They are not dunking on anyone or hitting last-second shots.

You figure out where you are strong and where others are strong, and you figure out where you need help and where others need help.

If Wheeler has taught us anything, is it to be a little more critical of how smart and talented we think we are. Seek more proof.