Before You Speak, Consider This

Befriending the Dunning-Kruger Effect for Lifelong Learning

By the author

Imagine you confidentially arguing over a topic with friends or co-workers like a genius, only to find out half of your theories are completely wrong. You take the responsibility of a project that you felt really confident about, ace the proposal presentations only to find out you have to do lot more than you planned and your time estimations are completely off.

Welcome to the world of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

If you just look around us, people trap in situations like this all the time. All of us, including you and me, overestimate our abilities in certain areas.

But wait, there are two sides to this coin. In some situations, we underestimate our abilities. How many times you brilliant writers dismissed your talent as mere luck. This also is a part of the same effect.

The Study

Back in 1999, two psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger discovered this phenomenon that leads to this particular effect.

For the study they gave the participants various tests to access their abilities in three areas: humor, logical reasoning and grammar; and asked to self-access how they performed in the test…