1999 by the American Psychological Association
Unskilled and Unaware of It:
How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated
Self-Assessments
Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department
of Psychology Cornell University
Charles Darwin:
(1871)"ignorance more frequently begets
confidence than does knowledge"
In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in
broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that
night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras
were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the
surveillance tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. "But I wore the
juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that
rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras (
Fuocco, 1996 ).
We argue that when people are incompetent in
the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a
dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate
choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.
Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression
that they are doing just fine.
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
A pretty profound discovery
- who'd have thot?
That men do not learn
very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons
of history. - Aldous Huxley
We bring up the unfortunate affairs of Mr. Wheeler to make
three points. The first two are noncontroversial. First, in many domains in
life, success and satisfaction depend on knowledge, wisdom, or savvy in knowing
which rules to follow and which strategies to pursue. This is true not only for
committing crimes, but also for many tasks in the social and intellectual
domains, such as promoting effective leadership, raising children, constructing
a solid logical argument, or designing a rigorous psychological study. Second,
people differ widely in the knowledge and strategies they apply in these domains
( Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989 ; Dunning, Perie, & Story, 1991
; Story & Dunning, 1998 ), with varying levels of success. Some of the
knowledge and theories that people apply to their actions are sound and meet
with favorable results. Others, like the lemon juice hypothesis of McArthur
Wheeler, are imperfect at best and wrong-headed, incompetent, or dysfunctional
at worst. Perhaps more controversial is the third point, the one that is the
focus of this article - above.
