Thread by @garwboy

Seeing many mentions of the Dunning-Kruger effect lately, in the context of people confidently making declarations or sharing 'advice' about #COVID2019uk, despite experts saying otherwise

Here's how D-K works (far as I know), and why I don't think it's the full story here

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The Dunning-Kruger effect stems from psychologists Dunning and Kruger hearing of a guy who committed an armed bank robbery in broad daylight, with no disguise. When (inevitably) caught, it was revealed that he'd rubbed his face in lemon juice
qz.com/986221/what-kn…

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Lemon juice is used to make invisible ink, you see
sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/in…
So, the guy thought he wouldn't show up on cameras, because he was 'invisible'. He was so confident in his conclusions that he committed major felonies, on camera, in front of witnesses

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And so the Dunning-Kruger effect was born, as the eponymous psychologists explored the phenomenon whereby individuals have complete confidence in their conclusions, even when contradicted by experts. And they'll act on these conclusions. Despite being 100% objectively wrong

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How can this happen? It is, potentially, an unfortunate quirk of the human brain and how it operates.

Our brains are constantly self-assessing, comparing our qualities and traits to those of others, to those we *want* to achieve, to our ambitions etc.

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Our ability to self-assess, our 'insight', can be traced to the frontal lobes, the 'thinking' part of the brain. Such abilities are often hampered by disorders and brain injury, which causes a lot of problems

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17510591

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The exact neurological mechanisms that allow us to self-assess are still unclear; it's a very complex 'meta' process, analysing your own abilities, and numerous brain region are bound to be tied up in it

scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/810/

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However, here's one general explanation for the Dunning-Kruger effect;

The ability to effectively and accurately assess your own intelligence and how it compares to those of others? That ability involves a lot of information processing. It *requires* intelligence itself

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To put it simply; recognising how intelligent you are compared to others *requires a minimum level of intelligence*

And if your available intelligence doesn't meet this minimum threshold? You'll struggle, or be unable, to recognise other people as more intelligent

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This leads to some very annoying implications, mainly that people who are less intelligent are unable to recognise this fact, or the superior intelligence of others. So, they don't see any reason to doubt their conclusions, or to not argue with someone vastly more informed

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This is covered in more detail in my first book The Idiot Brain, by the way. It had to be, with a title like that

amazon.co.uk/Your-Parents-D…

#SneakyPlug

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However, having said all that, I DON'T think the Dunning-Kruger effect is the reason why people share objectively wrong or contradictory stuff about #COVID2019uk, or about politics, or climate change, or mental health, or anything people feel strongly about

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Sure, it'll be responsible for *some* misinformation spread. But I'd argue it's seriously unlikely that so many functional otherwise-normal adults also have a below-minimum-threshold of intelligence. I'd say other, more common, factors are at work.

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Part of it's going to be a combination of mental self-defence combined with confirmation bias. People don't like the idea of a deadly virus sweeping society, it's scary. So, will instinctively be more receptive to any information that downplays the risks

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There's also the 'tribal identity' thing, which is a ludicrous problem at present. If you've spent years lambasting the influence of foreigners and elites, then medical experts telling you what to do about a virus from overseas are going to meet a lot of knee-jerk resistance

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But, all things considered, a lot of it's down to people being told there's a scary virus on it's way, and them being worried about this. And that's fair, really. Nobody is at their most rational when facing an unspecified, uncertain threat

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Point is:
Is there a valid phenomenon where people confidently make bold claims and conclusions because they lack the intelligence to know they're wrong?

Yes

Does this therefore mean anyone sharing inaccurate info about #COVID2019uk is an idiot?

No, not at all

#Science

/end