In this, the first week of January when so many stupid things happen, like New Years Resolution and January 6th, I bring you the origin of the Dunning-Kruger effect:
On this day 30 years ago, the inspiration for codifying the Dunning-Kruger effect, which describes how people with little ability somehow believe they excel in it, occurred.
On January 6th, 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two metropolitan Pittsburgh banks at gunpoint.
They made no attempts to disguise themselves. They had spread lemon juice on their faces, believing it would make them invisible to security cameras. Like with ‘invisible ink’.
Both were arrested and went to jail.
When later asked why they thought they were invisible, Wheeler had a physics explanation for how security cameras should be confused by lemon juice. He had tested it experimentally.
Psychologist David Dunning read the story and wondered, “If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.”
So he and his graduate student Justin Kruger set out to prove it.
Another (simpler) way to look at the Dunning-Kruger than as a metacognitive effect – they were observing a basic statistical effect known as regression to the mean.
If you are at the bottom of the range there is more scope for you to overestimate than underestimate. And if you are at the top end, then vice versa.
Google Gemini says…
Yes, regression to the mean (RTM) is a significant statistical factor that critics argue explains much of the Dunning-Kruger (DK) pattern, especially when studies use the same noisy measure for both ability and self-assessment, causing extreme scores to naturally drift toward the average on retesting; however, Dunning and Kruger argue that a true psychological component (metacognitive deficit) also exists, with poor performers lacking insight, though RTM explains the general upward bias in self-estimates for low performers and downward bias for high performers.
Psychological historians will look back on our current shenanigans as a prime example of what happens when societies allow the Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias, and conservatism bias to run amok.