Steve: Dunning-Kruger Effect

By: steve-wang

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where incompetent people are over estimate their abilities and competent people underestimate themselves. I knew someone who just started playing a game but thought he could beat another person who had played for years because he could beat other people his level. However, he was very wrong. He probably thought he could beat a very experienced played because he had beaten some other people consistently and has not really played with very many people better than him. It is very easy to fall into the Dunning-Kruger Effect because when you are incompetent at something, you probably do not have very much knowledge about it and have no idea what better is because you do not know it exists. In contrast, when you have a certain competence level of something, you have knowledge of someone who you believe is more competent than you are and you also understand existing knowledge you have yet to learn. Sometimes the Dunning-Kruger Effect can cause problems in team when the leader thinks they know everything even in areas where they are not experts in. This will make actual experts in that area very angry because they probably know of better choices. Then, it will cause people to get angry because some leaders think that they are the leader, hence the are always right. To stay away from the Dunning-Kruger effect, you can learn more about an area and be open to criticism.