Dunning-Kruger Effect | Illusory Superiority

Loveland, Colorado | October 2016 | Nate Gowdy

The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyse their performance, leading to a significant overestimate of themselves. In simple words it's "people who are too stupid to know how stupid they are".

... The Dunning-Kruger effect is a slightly more specific case of the bias known as illusory superiority, where people tend to overestimate their good points in comparison to others around them, while concurrently underestimating their negative points. The effect has been shown by experiment in several ways, but in this case Dunning and Kruger tested students on a series of criteria such as humour, grammar, and logic and compared the actual test results with each student's own estimation of their performance.

Those who scored well on these tests were shown, consistently, to underestimate their performance. This is not terribly surprising and can be explained as a form of psychological projection: those who found the tasks easy (and thus scored highly) mistakenly thought that they would also be easy for others. This is similar to the aforementioned "impostor syndrome" — found notably in graduate students and high-achieving women — whereby high achievers fail to recognise their talents as they think that others must be equally good.

More interestingly, and the subject of what became known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, those who scored lowest on the test were found to have "grossly overestimated" their scores. And what about the underachievers who overestimated their performance? In the words of Dunning and Kruger: This overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Source | Journal Article  

Importance Of Electing A Mentally Healthy Narcissist

This is a severely excerpted selection from an open letter by Craig Malkin, a psychologist who studies narcissism. The original letter was posted online in Psychology Today.

... As an expert on narcissism, I'm not especially worried that narcissists might make it to the White House. According to research, they've always been there. And that shouldn't scare us anyway, because, just to be clear: Being a narcissist is not a diagnosis. It never has been. Narcissists are people higher in narcissistic traits than the average person, and while they may or may not be disordered, they all share one thing in common: They feel special. Some feel special enough to lead a nation, in fact. What we should be far more concerned about is not whether politicians are narcissists -- most are -- but how healthy they are.

... Politicians are groomed by us -- by our applause, by our polls, by our votes. Whatever you seem to love or hate, they'll embrace or reject. So be careful what you applaud or attack. It matters what they-- and all the little future leaders watching them -- think you want in a leader.

1. Do applaud careful reflection.
2. Don't applaud insults.
3. Do applaud feelings.
4. Don't applaud manipulation.
5. Do applaud collaborative behavior.
6. Don't applaud black-and-white thinking.
7. Do applaud apologies.
8. Don't applaud evasiveness.
9. Do applaud curiosity.

Learn more at Dr. Malkin's FB page.

Cheating Really Does Feel Wonderful

New research suggests that the feeling of guilt associated with cheating on an exam or lying on tax returns is actually just a figment of our imagination; a feeling our memories conjure up after the fact to make us feel better about being unethical. Because in actuality — according to a new study, "The Cheater's High," conducted by researchers from the University of Washington, Harvard, London Business School, and Penn — cheating feels pretty damn good.

The researchers conducted six different experiments offering participants a multitude of opportunities to cheat (both directly and indirectly, sometimes with the lure of financial gain and sometimes not). They found that the cheaters generally felt thrilled, satisfied, and superior about their dishonesty. “We were a little appalled,” University of Washington postdoctoral research associate Nicole E. Ruedy — the lead author of the study — told the New York Times. “The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing, because there is emotional reinforcement of the behavior, meaning they could be more likely to do it again,” Ruedy said.

Journal of Personal and Social Psychology via Gawker

Open Culture | Reading Literary Fiction Improves Emotional Intelligence

A new study published this week in Science concludes that you may get something unexpected from reading great literary works: more finely-tuned social and emotional skills. Conducted by Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd (researchers in the psych department at the New School for Social Research), the study determined that readers of literary fiction (as opposed to popular fiction or non-fiction) find themselves scoring better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence. In some cases, it took reading literary fiction for only a few minutes for test scores to improve.


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