The Dunning-Kruger effect

Recently I’ve mentioned 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. It 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 a rather poor intermediate level and thinks her grammar is better than yours just because she spent a summer in Bristol. 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? Well one 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. So that other friend of yours with a passable intermediate level who claims that "he knows English" (unfortunate sentence indeed) might not even be aware of the extent of your real skills precisely because he does not have them.

The paper 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 highly competent people tend to be cautious about their own skills. Here is the actual scientific article for those of you who may like to take a peek at it. Just the abstract is worth the visit. It’s a fascinating read. Those of you who don’t have the time (or the disposition) to face an academic text 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 they 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 but please, do me a favor, look on the bright side.

You know a lot! Remember you already speak English. 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.