Real World Event Discussions

Democracy of idiots?

POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Sunday, August 30, 2026 16:13
VIEWED: 4037
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1KIKI

Sunday, June 3, 2012 5:41 PM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DT
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Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find
They're blind to own failings, others' skills

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DT
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There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

``I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it,'' Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

``Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

This deficiency in ``self-monitoring skills,'' the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.

In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to ``grossly overestimate'' how well they had performed.

In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.

Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored only in the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile, and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.

Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to ``identify grammatically correct standard English,'' and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.

On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an ``expert'' panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.

Unlike unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the ``false consensus effect.''

When high-scoring subjects were asked to ``grade'' the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own

1KIKI

Sunday, June 3, 2012 5:44 PM

This is a conundrum not only for democracy but for the US self-congratulatory psyche.

KWICKO

Sunday, June 3, 2012 6:54 PM

Quote:
People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

``I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it,'' Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

``Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

You've just described Rappy to a tee, and explained the rise of the tea-baggers.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I've not watched the video either, or am incapable of intellectually dealing with the substance of this thread, so I'll instead act like a juvenile and claim victory..." - Rappy

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Sunday, June 3, 2012 10:30 PM

This is interesting research, and relevent to some study I am doing at the moment. Thanks for posting. I was scratching my head at this phenomenon, which I recently observed when getting some staff to self assess their skill level and the ones who had the least actually rated themselves quite high. It really shows how self evaluation has some serious limits.

KWICKO

Sunday, June 3, 2012 10:37 PM

It's been shown in some studies, where Americans rate America quite high on a number of various things which America is really not very good at. One could almost say that the only thing America is really number one at is yelling "We're Number One!"

And you cannot convince these idiots that it's just not true.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I've not watched the video either, or am incapable of intellectually dealing with the substance of this thread, so I'll instead act like a juvenile and claim victory..." - Rappy

1KIKI

Sunday, June 3, 2012 11:52 PM

Well, it exposes the shaky foundation of the Enlightenment and its rationale for democracy. The Enlightenment displaced theism and put nature at the center of its thinking. Unfortunately, their idea of 'man as nature intended' was extremely idealistic. Man was the independent and free 'noble savage', whose exposure to learning and social influence could only harm.

Translated to today, it means the uneducated 'common man' is a supposed font of wisdom, while the educated are effete corrupted snobs. So any true believer Bubba, whether against global warming, any and all vaccinations, social cooperation (or other topics) is considered to be the ideal, while people who really do have knowledge and capability - scientists, doctors, economists and philosophers are dismissed. (The kicker is that those truly backward Bubbas tend to pride themselves on their wisdom.)

So, what does it mean for a democracy when important decisions are left in the hands of at least some people who are abysmally ignorant and too ignorant to know that they're ignorant? And what of those decisions that are SO technical, SO complex that there are actually very few people who understand at any level?

I think the founding fathers, while in theory in favor of democracy, were extremely skeptical of putting real power in the hands of the people. Hence people only indirectly elected their senators, and to this day only indirectly elect the president. But while the FF rejected the idea of kingship and were wary of the hoi polloi, the only alternative they could come up with were to empower people who RESEMBLED kings - white, male, wealthy, and older.

And they put layers and layers of deliberative bodies and naysayers between what the common man might want, and what actually happened.

KPO

Monday, June 4, 2012 6:46 PM

I wonder if this is true across cultures.

Around the world Americans have a 'dumb' stereotype. But I personally doubt that Americans are on the whole dumber than British people; my theory is that American idiots are louder and more self-confident, than British idiots.

And more politically involved.

It's not personal. It's just war.

AURAPTOR

Monday, June 4, 2012 6:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:

You've just described Rappy to a tee, and explained the rise of the tea-baggers.

Because anyone who thinks following Greece's economic path is a bad idea MUST be an idiot.

Fact is, it actually describes YOU to a tee, you're just too stupid to realize it.

Which is quite the point in the first place!

Note to anyone - Anthony is a sack of go se, and will continue to be one until he removes his idiotic signature concerning his bald face lie about me and apologizes.

" We're all just folk. " - Mal

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Eins

HKCAVALIER

Monday, June 4, 2012 10:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Well, it exposes the shaky foundation of the Enlightenment and its rationale for democracy.

Hey kiki,

You say this as if there's a more desirable political system going? This is me, but I see a nasty undercurrent of pretty entrenched, unapologetic elitism throughout this thread. That, and the increasingly typical doom & gloom, the-world-sucks attitude all too common to this board. Is that really what we all need right now? More of that?

First off, there's no indication that this competency problem is a constant throughout history. Anti-intellectualism has been around for a good long while in this country, prolly going back to the revolution and our politicized disdain for all things British. But it’s never taken center stage in our public discourse the way it has today. Even 40 years ago we built things to last longer and successfully launched folk into space. Then we went crazy with contracting everything to the lowest bidder and our entire infrastructure went to hell. I look at GWB getting elected on the strength of "I could see having a beer with him." At what point in our history leading up to that nadir would such a thing be considered a criterion for national office?

The Kennedy assassinations, Watergate, Iran/Contra, etc. had eroded any vestigial respect we had for authority (fear is not respect) and we've yet to find anything meaningful to take its place. That’s a damn serious problem, right there, and no one is devising studies to figure out what to do about that.

Also, we are all, more and more, becoming ensconced in our personal bubbles. When so much of what we want and think we need is just a keystroke away, we never have to test our grandiose theories of our own competence if we don't ever want to. Yeah, I think this study might play a little differently in cultures not nearly as affluent as our own. When competence (i.e.: an accurate understanding of how something works) is no longer required for survival, it will naturally atrophy, no? We, as a nation are becoming more and more divorced from reality.

No reality, no reality check.

Our educational system goes to hell and instead of the usual majors in college, the universal skill set acquired is How to Bullshit With the Best of Them, and Advanced CYA. With our bosses/teachers/politicians busy lying their pants off to stay afloat and covering their own asses, our leaders have no time and have lost the proper temperament to check our delusions. It’s gotten to the point, of course, that our delusions actually increase their power over us, so they are further disinclined to correct our misunderstandings.

Yes, it's hell on our political system. But to say it has always been thus strikes me as myopic.

Unfortunately, the only sure way I know to uproot delusion is for reality to hit us where we live, and looking around today, I fear we’re right on track.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

KWICKO

Monday, June 4, 2012 11:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:

You've just described Rappy to a tee, and explained the rise of the tea-baggers.

Because anyone who thinks following Greece's economic path is a bad idea MUST be an idiot.

Fact is, it actually describes YOU to a tee, you're just too stupid to realize it.

Ah, yes - Rappy falls back on the "I know you are, but what am I?" gambit yet again.

Thank you for showing us all just how truly fucking dumb you really are, and how confident you are in that "genius" you're shoveling at us.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I've not watched the video either, or am incapable of intellectually dealing with the substance of this thread, so I'll instead act like a juvenile and claim victory..." - Rappy