Dunning-Kruger Effect

By Yiler Huang

Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon where people who are skilled think that they are not, and people who are not skilled think they are. This happens because the less someone knowns about a skill, the less they know about how hard it is. Therefore, they tent to assume tasks involving these skills are easy. On the other hand, skilled people know a lot about a certain skill. Therefore, they understand the difficulties involving in relating tasks.

This effect happened to me when I was playing the game Elden Ring. When I was not too far into the game, I encountered the first boss Margit the Fell Omen. I thought he wouldn't be too hard to defeat, but it eventually took me days to learn his moves and be able to beat it. This happened because I was not familiar the game, and didn't understand how difficult the game was. It is difficult to not fall into this effect, because sometimes there are just areas that we are not very familiar with. Even if you are actively trying to learn new things, they will still be crafts and skills that you don't understand.

This effect can caused problems in society in many ways. One thing that happens a lot in companies is that the boss would think that they are competent and know what they are doing, but in reality they might have just fallen into the Dunning-Kruger effect. Because bosses usually make significant decisions in companies, they might make unsound choice that make the employees' life harder. You don't necessarily need to be very knowledgeable to avoid falling into this effect. All you need to do it to acknowledge that there are things that you might not understand in certain areas, and be humble when you are communicating with people.