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The Dunning-Kruger Effect

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[A 2016 piece originally titled “Happily Misinformed” cites a feature of our age that seems even more appropriate now than when it was first published. How can we explain people who hold ersatz opinions in contradiction to established facts and evidence?  Here’s an updated version of that piece.]

In his sobering 1989 study, Democracy Without Citizens, Robert Entman dwells on the irony of living in an information-rich age among uninformed citizens.  There is a rich paradox to a culture where most members have a vast virtual library available on their computer, yet would struggle to pass a third grade civics test.  According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center, only one in three Americans can name our three branches of government. And only the same lone third could identify the party that controls each of the two houses of Congress. Fully a fifth of their sample thought that close decisions in the Supreme Court were sent to Congress to be settled.

Add in the dismal results of map literacy tests of high school and college students (“Where is Africa?,”  “Identify your city on this map”), and we have just a few markers of a failed information society.

As Entman noted, “computer and communication technology has enhanced the ability to obtain and transmit information rapidly and accurately,” but “the public’s knowledge of facts or reality have actually deteriorated.”  The result is “more political fantasy and myth transmitted by the very same news media.” We seem to live comfortably without even elementary understandings of forces that effect our lives.

This condition is sometimes identified as a feature of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a peculiarly distressing form of functional ignorance observed by two Cornell psychologists.  Their basic idea is that many of us seem not to be bothered by what we don’t know, producing a level of ignorance that allows us to overestimate our knowledge.  Dunning and Kruger found that “incompetent” individuals (those falling into the lowest quartile of knowledge on a subject) often failed to recognize their own lack of skill, failed to recognize the extent to which they were misinformed, and did not to accurately gauge the skills of others. In short, a person’s ignorance can actually increase rather than decrease their informational confidence. If you have an Uncle Fred who is certain that former President Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya, or that vaccines cause autism, you have an idea of what kind of willful ignorance this represents.

The Boundaries of the Unknown Grow the More We Know

Think of this pattern in an inverted sense: from the perspective of individuals who truly know what they are talking about.  Even for the well-informed, the more they know about a subject, the larger the circumference of the boundaries that delineate the unknown.  It takes considerable knowledge to know what you don’t know. That’s why those who have mastered a subject area are often the most humble about their expertise: their expanded understanding of a field give them a sense of the many areas that remain to be explored.

All of this makes listening to the truly ignorant a measure of our forbearance.  We are left to vicariously know the shame of someone who is not smart enough to feel it. As with our President, we wonder why he doesn’t feel more embarrassment for his exaggerations and  falsehoods.  Has he never really read about the substantive policy accomplishments of F.D.R (the FDIC, Social Security) or L.B.J.? (successful anti-poverty programs, the Civil Rights acts of 1964 or 1965).  Can slapping on tariffs for goods and subverting long-standing values of equality and fairness be enough to count as great leadership?

The Dunning-Kruger Effect shows it self in other ways as well. A key factor is our distraction by all forms of media—everything from texting to empty-headed television programming—that leaves us with little available time to be contributing members of the community.   When the norm is checking our phones over 100 times a day, we have perhaps reached a tipping point where we have no time or energy left to fill in our own informational black holes.

The idea of citizenship should mean more.  In this coming election cycle it’s worth remembering that nearly half of eligible voters will probably not bother to vote.  And even more will have no interest in learning about president and legislative candidates.  Worst still, this is all happening at a time when candidates have been captured by a reality-show logic that substitutes melodrama for more sober discussions of  how they intend to govern.  Put it altogether, and its clear that too many of us don’t notice that we are engrossed with a sideshow rather than the main event.

On the Make

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Selling things or promises is our common national heritage, usually featuring a mixture of shameless persuasion and outright ‘cons.’ 

Most cultural observers note that Americans these days are perhaps better at selling stuff than making it.  It’s an understatement to note that we have a knack for marketing services and wares to each other.  Our economy is largely propelled by consumption.  And while we can still design elegant products like phones, cars and electronics, many if not most of their parts are made elsewhere.  On the other hand, selling them is something we still do well, sometimes too well.

Even Americans with modest incomes are drowning in stuff. There’s a store and product for nearly every budget.  One sign is the spread of the American idea of franchise stores, with familiar brands now in every corner of the world.  Think of McDonalds or Marriott.  Another sign is the common problem families face in finding places to store all of the things they have accumulated.  In most neighborhoods garages originally built to hold cars are now used for storage.  Especially in the West, the family car is usually relegated to the driveway.

Cultural historian Daniel Boorstin was among the first to offer a seminal account of the typical American “go getter” continually “on the make.”  (The Americans: The Democratic Experience, 1973). Our common heritage is selling and buying medicines, household products and goods that promise happiness.  CNBC’s popular reality show Shark Tank continues the trend and represents it in miniature. It features investors with cash whose hearts quicken when they hear a good sales ‘pitch’, often from strivers who have more optimism than judgement.  Some may be natural entrepreneurs.  But it’s equally likely that others are attracted to the idea of making a pitch as a pathway to celebrity.  Everyone knows the story of actress Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Jade, who used her ill-gained admission to the University of Southern California not to become a serious student, but because of the ego-boost of being a social media “influencer” on campus.  We can also look to the current President as an example the ultimate “man on the make.” Given recent evidence of massive business losses over the years, Donald Trump appears to have little talent for anything except selling his “brand.”  In this sense, his ‘cons’ make him less of an outlier then we might think.

 

The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much. 

Observing this long-running streak from the communication side makes it plain that little has changed since the days of P. T. Barnum, or the medicine shows that once toured the country.  Today, many students beginning their college careers are still enamored with the apparatus of selling as represented by ad agencies, public relations firms, social media, electronic media and other ways to attract willing buyers. In my own institution the fields of marketing, sales and communication studies easily attract more students than fields like engineering or education.  And while a professor of persuasion should delight in seeing communication as a subject of special interest, it’s apparent that this fascination often comes with less thought in what the content of a given message should be. The pitch is the thing; the product, not so much.  And so the campus television studio remains high on the list of places for future communication students to visit. The excellent library can wait.

Consider another case. A recent New York Times article described the rising popularity of entrepreneurial summer camps around the country.  Parents can now enroll their eight-year-olds for weeks of immersion in the business world.  Highlights typically include stops at a “personal branding station,” in addition to the chance for these youngsters to make their own television commercials for products they will presumably think up later.  If their fantasies eventually come true, they may design a campaign around some plastic thing they can pitch to the rest of us as a product “as seen on TV.”  The American love affair with selling continues even in the pristine woods and away from our screens.