Recently I’ve mentioned in class the Dunning Kruger effect, which the
Wikipedia defines as a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as
greater than it is. It sounds rather obvious, but there’s more to it than meets
the eye. So, allow me to expand on that.
This particular and pervasive bias was first described by professor Dave Dunning and his then grad student
Justin Kruger in a scientific article which won the notorious IgNobel prize for
Psychology. One of the corolaries of their research establishes the
relationship between the skills one needs to be competent in an area and the
skills one needs to realize or appreciate other people’s competence in that
same area. In that article Dunning and Kruger use a compelling argument, which
should strike a chord with all of you:
For example, consider
the ability to write grammatical English. The skills that enable one to
construct a grammatical sentence are the same skills necessary to recognize a
grammatical sentence, and thus are the same skills necessary to determine if a
grammatical mistake has been made. In short, the same knowledge that underlies the ability to produce correct judgment is also the knowledge that
underlies the ability to recognize correct judgment. To lack the former is to
be deficient in the latter.
Let’s dwell on that for a minute and think of that obnoxious
friend of yours who has an intermediate level of English and thinks her grammar
is better than yours just because she spent a summer in Bristol. Chances are she will not
be able to appreciate whether the sentence little did I know what they were up
to is correct or not. Why not? For a simple reason: in order to be able to
pass judgment on that sentence she would have to be aware of the very grammar
rules that allow inversion in English (little did I know, nowhere had I seen,
etc.) and that information is exactly what you need to know in order to produce
that sentence. She is, effectively, trapped in her own ignorance.
It is important to note that the original paper by Dunning and Kruger explores many different areas which are not
necessarily "intellectual" in nature such as the sense of humor, the ability to play tennis or understand people’s emotions. In all those
areas results invariably offer the same conclusion: incompetente breeds
self-confidence and over-inflated egos. Not surprisingly, though, highly competent
people tend to be cautious about their own skills. Some of them suffer from the so-called impostor syndrome: the type of self-doubt that very competent people experience regarding their own ability. Anyway, for those of you who like to go to the original sources here is the actual scientific article. Just the
abstract is worth the visit. And those of you who don’t
have the time (or the disposition) to face an academic paper might prefer to
enjoy the video below:
Why do I keep harping on about this concept? For two
reasons. First and foremost because people with a relatively weak level of English tend to assume that their skills are far better than they really
are, which gives them a false sense of security. Reason number two: students
that are about to transition into the advanced level may experience what I call the “post-intermediate blues”. They realize how complex it can be to become a truly
proficient English speaker (this happens after achieving the B1 level) and, quite understandably, feel overwhelmed. That, my dear students, is your case. You are
either training to obtain a B2 certificate or attending my C1 classes. So you
already know how vast the universe is. Okay. Do me a favor, please look on the
bright side. You happen to know a lot! Remember you already speak English. In fact, you
understand this post, don’t you? Isn’t it amazing?
Don’t let your linguistic
awareness get you down. Just keep walking. The road is long but we’ll get there
eventually.
