Being an Expert Doesn’t Make You Infallible
It’s always valuable to know what you don’t know
What does it mean to be an “expert”?
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines an expert as a person “with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject.”
Who doesn’t want to be that person? Mastering a certain subject or having a certain specialty can lead to professional success and personal satisfaction. Having expertise can give you the confidence that often develops when you make predictions and the predictions turn out to be right.
In short, experts know their “knowns.”
But, according to a new study, when it comes to knowing what their “unknowns” are, experts may fall a little short.
Studying what people know and how sure they are that they know it
In a new article in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, authors Yuyan Han and David Dunning concluded that “expertise is associated with knowing with more certainty what one knows but conceals awareness of what one does not know.”
For their study, Han and Dunning examined experts in three different fields: climate science, psychology, and investing. They polled experts in those…
