Self-Confessed Experts

There is an idiom that sometimes pops up on social forums about ‘incompetent people being too incompetent to recognise their own incompetence’.

While often used as a catch-22 to win Internet arguments, it does have some grounding in reality, as over-estimations of competence are surprisingly common in all fields of knowledge.

However, recent research has shown that this may be more common in self-confessed intelligent people rather than unintelligent people, adding a new dimension to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The effect, coined by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, describes discrepancies between how much people think they know and how much they actually know.

In the latest study headed by Dunning, it was found that self-confessed experts were likely to claim knowledge of non-existent concepts, or concepts that they could not possibly know, for the sake of upholding their self-perception as an ‘expert’.

There were two major conclusions drawn from the study...

“The more individuals believe they know about a domain, the more likely they are to claim knowledge in that domain that they cannot possibly possess.”

“People do not simply consult a “mental index” that catalogues their knowledge but instead draw on pre-existing self-perceptions of knowledge to make inferences about what they should or probably do know.”

In other words, those with high knowledge in any particular field are influenced by perceptions of how they ought to think, rather than how they actually think.

This makes sense given that very intelligent people would expect themselves to appear very intelligent at all times. Whether social proof has any influence on such an expectation is grounds for further research, but it seems likely.

Take this definition of social proof from Robert Cialdini’s Influence:

“The principle states that we determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. We view a behaviour as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”

So, while it is possible that delusions of knowledge derive entirely from faulty self-perception, social expectations may place pressure on intelligent people to be consistently intelligent across all domains, thus reinforcing the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Of course, this doesn’t always have positive effects. As Dunning states:

“Self-perceived experts may give bad counsel when they should give none. Further, a tendency to overclaim may discourage individuals from educating themselves in precisely those areas in which they consider themselves knowledgeable…”

This becomes all too real when those with authority in one domain believe themselves competent enough to give authority in an unrelated domain.

Despite having little actual knowledge of the unrelated domain, the mere perception of their own authority causes them to over-estimate their own intelligence and influence across the board.

When politicians do this, and they do it often, it often results in poorly made decisions.  The simplest way for them to escape ensuing backlash relatively unscathed is one-part doublespeak mixed with two-parts backpedalling.

Conspiracy theorists are also a prime example of Dunning-Kruger in action, as they often build their entire propositions on the shoulders of one-or-two sources of knowledge, while ignoring the general scientific consensus that vastly outweighs said sources.

This might be why it is often difficult to pick conspiracy theorists out of a crowd until they unleash on you. They may be perfectly competent, intelligent people who just happen to have a few fringe ideas.

Intelligence does not translate across domains as fluently as we like to think.

Making it over ‘Mt. Stupid’ often involves considering a position or opinion contrary to our own. For intelligent people faced with expectations of intelligence, making the descent can be as straightforward as admitting that we simply don’t have all the answers.

a.ce