Who cares if the Dunning-Kruger effect is measurable? Weâve all known people for whom itâs true.
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Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed |
When I couldnât paint, I thought I knew everything. The more I learned, the more I realized I didnât know. Now, I often finish a painting wondering if itâs any good at all.
Iâm not unique in thatâmany experienced painters recount similar metamorphoses. I learned from author Van Reid that thereâs a name for this: the Dunning-Kruger effect. Psychologists found that low-ability students thought they were much better at their subject than they actually were, while high-ability students downplayed their own skills.
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Deadwood, 30X40, oil on linen, $6231 framed |
Itâs a hypothesis, because it hasnât been proved yet, but it sure feels right.
An answer that âfeels rightâ is one example of the kind of heuristic reasoning that inevitably leads to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Heuristics are mental shortcuts that match our current question to our prior experience. They may not provide perfect answers, but they give us quick ones. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we generally assume itâs a duck. If it turns out to be a shelduck instead, well, the error probably isnât that importantâunless youâre an ornithologist, in which case you already knew and thought the rest of us did, too.
The human mind is programmed to see patterns even where none exist. Modern life throws an amazing array of information at us every day. Itâs no surprise that our overtaxed minds try to cut through the welter by using mental shortcuts. Sometimes they go spectacularly wrong.
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Quebec Brook, oil on canvasboard, 12X16, $1449 framed |
This phenomenon is something youâve likely experienced in real life, especially if you spend much time on social media. A self-proclaimed âexpertâ will begin spouting off at length, blissfully unaware of how silly he or she sounds. It might even be me.
As originally described by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the bias results from two different problems. Low-ability people donât perceive their own incompetence. âIf you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent, wrote Dunning. âThe skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.â
On the other hand, people of high ability consistently overestimate the abilities of others. They erroneously presume that tasks that are easy to them will be easy for others as well.
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Skylarking, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed |
The Dunning-Kruger effect has nothing to do with intelligence; in fact, really smart people are often supremely overconfident. That leads them into making complete asses of themselves in fields outside their own competence. Think, for a moment, of William Shatnerâs music career, or Richard Dawkins on theology.
Whoâs happier: the cock-sure, incompetent young painter, or the self-deprecating master? Itâs a question nobody can answer. We canât look at the past except through the filter of what we now know. As a teacher, I would hate to ruin anyoneâs enjoyment of painting by making them a better painter. But thereâs consolation in knowing that there are paint-and-sipnights for those who really donât want to know what theyâre doing.
