Why It Feels Like You’re Surrounded by Idiots
Several psychological and societal factors that make it seem like stupid people are everywhere.
You know the feeling…
In a place where the conversation is going nowhere and the person who is talking to you, seems to be completely unaware of what is happening and is arguing passionately about something totally insensible, maybe even ignoring facts and logic.
“To be honest with myself, sometimes I get this feeling that I am surrounded by total morons.”
Just like it is simple to brush off others as being dumb or uninformed, there are more complex reasons for this elusive behavior.
This story explores some of the key psychological and societal factors that make it seem like idiots abound.
By understanding the forces that shape interaction and collective knowledge, we can hopefully build more patience and empathy.
We may even discover some idiotic tendencies within ourselves!
While we are likely to keep on meeting stupidity around us, understanding the worn-out characters can allow us to call white some things that, by their appearance, appear black.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that builds up confusion in people who have highly limited knowledge or competence and make them believe that they are far more skillful and qualified than what they appear.
Consequently, they usually end up being blind to their own faults and have faith that they outsmart fallibility, therefore, acts on poor judgments.
For example, an individual with minimal administrative knowledge can make sweeping claims about how to solve complex policy issues.
Their confidence far outpaces their actual understanding.
But, from their perspective, they feel they have brilliant solutions.
It’s not that they’re actively trying to deceive others; they’re genuinely oblivious to gaps in their knowledge.
The very incompetence that causes poor decisions also inhibits the metacognitive skills to realize one’s mistakes.
In that sense, the loud confidence of an uninformed opinion can feel grating.
When we witness a lack of self-awareness paired with unwarranted certainty, it invokes perceptions of stupidity.
Those who are the most competent take the opposite approach.
They critique their own limitations and weigh complex topics with a thoughtful approach.
High performers tend to underestimate their abilities, while low performers overestimate.
This creates perceptions at odds with reality.
Assumptions About Intelligence
When one holds a simplistic perspective that equates intelligence to a specific set of skills or abilities, they may overlook the diverse ways in which people express and excel in their intelligence.
For instance, someone might excel in logical reasoning and mathematical abilities, but can struggle with emotional intelligence or creativity.
Someone else might have extraordinary creative or musical ability, but they struggle with scientific ideas.
These variances demonstrate that intelligence is a complicated interaction of many cognitive capacities rather than a single characteristic.
Appreciating these differences allows for a deeper understanding of intelligence, recognizing that people use their minds differently to succeed in various domains.
Negativity Bias
Negativity bias is a psychological state where people focus on and escalate their negative experiences more than the positive.
We more likely to focus on, generate and have a memory of cases or interviews in general, the negative ones than the positive ones.
And that’s because negative events have a greater impact on our psyche.
Small frustrations or criticisms can ruin our entire day, while compliments or positive interactions don’t have as big of an effect.
This happens when it comes to people too.
We develop negative impressions of them faster. It often only takes one or two unfavorable interactions for us to form a negative opinion of someone.
However, we require many more positive experiences to override those negative impressions.
Furthermore, we generally assign unfavorable information more weight and believability. When given conflicting opinions or reviews, we are more likely to pay attention to and take the bad ones seriously than the favorable ones.
The presence of criticism or contrary views stands out.
Another thing that we need notify the readers about is that our brains have evolved to be a bit more skeptical concerning the problems or threats we face.
However, in the modern world, this trait of ours can make us too judgmental, negative, and even cynical where a milder and more fair-mind way of approaching the situation would be advantageous and more realistic.
Being conscious and mindful helps in avoiding giving a weightage to negative bias.Filter Bubbles
It goes without saying how easy it is to remain in a state of intellectual isolation where we to only become exposed to the thinking that echo the own of ours.
Social media algorithms and personized news feeds, leads content to our choices and point of view.
This can create a closed loop where we rarely encounter opposing views.
Over time, encountering only information and ideas that share our worldview can foster an “us vs. them” mentality.
This makes it easy to dismiss or dehumanize the “other side.”
Therefore, having ones they respect, influence or disprove different opinions of the same or very different nature may be a challenge.
This will result in one, who is used to seeing only their own, dividing their world in two parts and thus downgrading the others as grossly mistaken rather than fully realized.
An easy way to counter this tendency is to try to get different opinions which we may not agree with ourselves.
Beyond this, we must accept that in order to grow empathy and think of others, we must also be reminded that our adversaries are, too, humans like us.
Lack of Intellectual Humility
The key element of intellectual humility is having a mindset that understands that what one perceives and believes as well as personal statements may be wrong.
It incorporates the thought of continuing to learn, the readiness to revise own opinion led by the new evidence, and the comprehension that clever and thoughtful people may have a different understanding of complex questions.
Lacking intellectual humility yields closed mind and refusal to listen to other views and ideas.
With arrogance, there is a tendency for people to develop an intense attachment to their own ideas because those who oppose these views are regarded as not bright or ill-informed.
This closes them off from growth and makes it hard to have nuanced discussions.
Those who lack humility tend to see issues as black and white.
They believe their perspective is absolutely right, which means anyone opposed must be absolutely wrong.
This creates unnecessary division.
Intellectual humility allows people to accept that the truth often lies between extremes. It enables working together to build understanding, even amidst disagreement.
A little more openness and less dogmatic confidence in our own infallibility would go a long way. When surrounded by people you perceive as less intelligent, your best bet is to respond in a thoughtful, constructive manner.
First and foremost, avoid dismissing others as “idiots” without hearing them out.
Approach interactions with empathy, patience, and intellectual humility. Also, make an effort to engage with people of diverse views to challenge your own thinking.
This expands your knowledge and helps avoid a narrow mindset. And last but certainly not least, question your assumptions.
We all have cognitive biases. Recognize that feeling smarter than others could stem from arrogance rather than reality.
