Thursday, April 5, 2012

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Presented in a 1999 paper by Cornell University professor of psychology David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the effect describes how “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Those who really aren't very good at something overestimate their skill while those who are experts tend to sell themselves short. The reason is that the more skilled you are in a complicated endeavor (the effect is more prominent for difficult, complex tasks), the more you know what you don't know. This effect is increasingly more prominent with greater complexity.

So, this effect would suggest that those with the least knowledge and the lowest level of skill tend to be the most confident. Since people tend to elevate those with the most confidence to leadership, it would seem then that most often any given leadership may not know what they don't know ...

Well, at least we have a label for it ...