One day in 1995, McArthur Wheeler stepped into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. Later that night he was arrested, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken from surveillance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o’clock news. Later, at the moment the police showed him the surveillance tapes, Mr Wheeler gazed in incredulity. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. Obviously, Mr Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing with the face covered with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras. In these case, the concerned person heard by his friends that lemon juice would make his skin invisible. After a first application of the liquid on his face he took a picture. Then the latter didn’t see his face on the picture and conclude in effectiveness of the fruit juice; the unfortunate one just didn’t fit right the picture because of the liquid in his eyes.
As far as we know it seems to be absurd that applying lemon juice doesn’t make us invisible, better buy a mask for robbing. But how can one behave as Mr Wheeler? How could he believe in lemon juice superpower? From this story was born the curiosity of the scientist David Dunning and Justin Kruger, where they try to enlighten us about this types of behaves and believes.
The study
Thereby, to begin, they asked themselves the working question if it is really the ignorance of the individuals which induce them in credulity.
To undertake the study, Dunning and Kruger submit to a group of volunteers the experiment. Thus, three tests were presented to the participants that assessed their ability in a domain in which knowledge, wisdom, or savvy was crucial: humour, logical reasoning, and English grammar. Here the study was splitted in three major studies according to the three themes. Where the experiment individuals applied a self-assessments. So the authors aimed to reveal distance between our self-representation and our actual effectiveness.
In the three cases, on the one hand it was predicted that the individuals in general would overestimate their ability and performance. And in the other hand, those who proved to be incompetent would be unaware that they had performed poorly.
Results
The study argued that incompetence not only causes poor performance but also the inability to recognize our real performance. The three studies lays out the same results and confirmed the predictions which were made. Those whom estimate themselves to be very competent were the ones whom have obtained the lowest score in each test. Yet the participants whom underestimated their performance achieved the highest score.
Discussion
After all those investigations, Dunning and Kruger emerged four main conclusions:
- First of all, people are incapable to self-assess correctly;
- Then, individuals in general doesn’t recognize others performance;
- They are unable to actually estimate their ignorance about a specific domain;
- And finally, if they are not trained to improve their performance, they have the capacity to recognize and accept their ignorance.
According to the results, it has to be noticed that all the effect revealed concern all the individuals in general in Society, all persons who overestimate or underestimate them performance.
To explain this effect, the authors express that the cognitive biases appears because the skills which guide us to act in a good thing is the same as the skills which allow people to assess the right results. More simply, how can a person evaluate negatively a thing without knowing how it had to should be done correctly?
Conclusion
Considering this great investigation, through their reflexions and work, arising from the lemon juice power of Mr Wheeler, David Dunning and Justin Kruger have presented their theory, commonly called the Dunning-Kruger Effet, which is explored in their article into why people tend to hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves. Warned by the a sort of conscious knowledge of the truth about our performance, as professional, as student or as a simple individual we have to take care of this biases in all social situation. Finally the readers have to be assured that this theory “is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly” (Dunning D. & Kruger J. 1999).
Bibliography:
Kruger J. & Dunning D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 77, no 6. P. 1121–34
I’m Rakotoarijaona A. Adimby. To introduce myself, i’m in a M.A Social and Organisation Psychology. As a student in human and social sciences, I got my Bachelor in Psychology in Madagascar, then I decided to move in Nantes for more opportunities and multidisciplinary work. At last, I intend to become a Psychologist through the pracite way.