The lower the ability, the easier it is for people to overestimate themselves. This is a typical "Dak effect".

Author | Tang Yicheng, China Popular Science Mental Health Promotion Center

Recently, the epidemic in the United States has become increasingly serious, and the number of confirmed cases is about to exceed 1.4 million. The entire world has clearly seen the U.S. government’s handling of emergencies. ability. At this time, US President Trump began to boast about the number of tests in the United States, claiming that the United States no longer had a shortage of tests, and believed that his work was "done very well."

In fact, Trump's "omniscient and omnipotent" persona has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. "No one understands the epidemic better than me", "No one understands technology better than me", "I am better than anyone else on earth." Everyone must understand renewable resources", "I think I know the truth better than anyone else"... We can't help but sigh, why can Trump speak so brazenly? Where does his "mysterious confidence" come from?

The more stupid, the more arrogant? Interesting Dak Effect

In fact, Trump’s "mysterious confidence" is a typical Dak effect. The full name of the "Duck Effect" is the "Dunning-Kruger effect", which is a common cognitive bias in which people with insufficient abilities mistakenly believe that they are better than others because of their lack of insight and self-knowledge. excellent. The less you know, the less you know you don't know. Just like Darwin said, "ignorance makes people more confident than knowledge." In this way, Trump's self-confidence does not come from ability, but from ignorance.

In a sense, "mysterious self-confidence" is human nature, and the Dak effect lurks in everyone. In 1997, U.S. News and World Report magazine conducted a survey: Among contemporary celebrities, who do you think deserves to go to heaven after death? As a result, the celebrities received average approval ratings.

At that time, US President Clinton’s approval rating for going to heaven was only 52 among readers; Michael Jordan’s approval rating was 65; Mother Teresa was recognized by the world as a good person, and she was also a Among religious people, her approval rating is only 79. Going to heaven is not like going to college, there is no quota limit, but the world's requirements for these celebrities are so strict. But there is one person whose average approval rating for entering heaven is as high as 87 - this person is "me". That is, each person participating in the survey himself. Most people think they deserve heaven more than Clinton, Jordan, and Mother Teresa.

Cornell University psychology professor David Downing and his doctoral student Justin Kruger were very interested in this kind of ignorant self-confidence. They conducted four experiments and found that in humor, Those who are least capable of writing and logical skills always overestimate themselves. When their actual score is only 12, they think their score is above 60.

Why does the "Dak Effect" occur? This aspect comes from the self-attribution bias, which means that when a good result occurs, you feel that you are relatively capable; if a bad result occurs, you feel that you are unlucky, or you shift the responsibility to other people. For example: When the political situation is stable, Trump will habitually attribute it to himself. When the epidemic gets out of control, he begins to "blame" it on China, insisting that it is not his fault.

In addition, the "Dak Effect" also comes from the illusion of control, which is that there are things you have no control over at all, but you think you can. Regarding the illusion of control, there is an interesting experiment. In the experiment, psychologists asked the subjects: When playing roulette, if you had a choice, would you rather let the dealer throw it or throw it yourself? In fact, anyone who has studied probability theory should know that whoever throws the money has no impact on the outcome. The probability of winning or losing money is certain.

But everyone participating in the experiment hopes to throw the ball themselves. People naively believe that by controlling the gambling process, they can control the results of gambling. This is a typical manifestation of the illusion of control.

Recently, Trump predicted that "we will have a new coronavirus vaccine before the end of the year." However, in fact, the advent of the new coronavirus vaccine is a matter of great uncertainty. Trump Thinking that you have complete control over the process of vaccine development is falling into an illusion of control.

The highest state of the Dak Effect - self-deception

Of course, there are situations where it is not possible to be unconfident, such as giving a speech, and you have to pretend to be confident. Maybe you are pretending to be confident. The more times you do it, the more confident you will become. As the saying goes, "fake it till you make it" (fake it until you succeed), but speaking is inherently a performance. As the head of state, Trump obviously doesn’t have much ability, yet he deliberately acts like he is omniscient and omnipotent, which is deceiving the people. The biggest danger is that you can easily deceive yourself by pretending.

Dan Ariely, the author of "Bizarre Behavior", conducted an experiment. Subjects were asked to take a test in a separate room, and prizes were awarded for correct answers. The experiment was deliberately designed to give subjects the opportunity to cheat, but what the subjects didn't know was that all cheating did not escape the eyes of the researchers. What researchers care about is not how many people cheat, but what those who cheat think about themselves. After completing the questions, each subject had to fill in a self-questionnaire to evaluate their own level.

It turned out that those who cheated had very good evaluations of themselves, and they really thought they were great! Don't you remember that you just cheated? ! This is because the human brain doesn't handle "pretending" well. Just like an actor will be moved by the plot once he enters the play, people will think that what they are pretending is true to a certain extent. Cheaters pretend to be awesome, but they actually think they are awesome. So, after so often pretending, maybe Trump now truly believes that he is the one who can fix everything.

The "Dak Effect" in life

In daily life, the "Dak Effect" is also quite common. For example, irrational consumption is inseparable from the "Dak Effect" It doesn't matter. Have you ever had this experience? Some clothes you liked very much when you bought them, but when you look at them a few days after you get them home, you find them ugly? This is because the brain will simulate various future scenarios based on current needs. Because the current demand is real, you are particularly confident about the future simulation. But you don't know that as time changes, your feelings will continue to change.

Scientists conducted an experiment to see if people could guess their own taste two weeks later. The method is very simple. Give a bunch of delicious food and let the people taking the test choose from it. After two weeks, half of them slapped themselves in the face—their tastes had changed, and women were 10 to 20 times more likely than men to do so. It is not difficult to understand why most of the people who lament "chopped hands" are women.

In addition to irrational consumption, the "Dak Effect" can also lead to plan failure because people in a state of overconfidence tend to ignore the "emotional temperature difference." The "emotional temperature gap" was proposed by three human behavior experts at Carnegie Mellon University. It refers to the fact that when you are in a certain emotional state, it is difficult to imagine yourself in other emotional states.

For example: When you are not hungry, it is difficult to imagine how you feel and behave when you are hungry. "After enjoying a holiday meal, many people make weight loss plans for the future. But I was in a calm state at the time and was overconfident in my ability to resist food temptation, so I made unrealistic promises.

Understanding the "Dak Effect", we understand: The lower the ability, the easier it is for people to overestimate themselves, or at least evaluate their ability above the average level.

However, sometimes people with higher abilities tend to underestimate their abilities. This brings us to the other end of the "Dak Effect"-"Imposter Syndrome".

Although some people are smart and capable, they always feel that they can do nothing, that everything is pretending, and that success depends on luck. Research has found that 70% of people have experienced "imposter syndrome". They seem to be trapped in a vicious circle. When teachers or superiors assign tasks to themselves, they worry that they are not competent and that others will find out that they are a liar. Get anxious, and that anxiety can sometimes interfere with performance, causing them to really not perform well.

Whether it is the "Dak Effect" or "Imposter Syndrome", they are manifestations of inaccurate self-perception. In fact, self-perception is our lifelong task. You won't win true respect by covering up your mistakes, and only by reforming your past can you understand the qualities a person should have. I hope we all have the wisdom and courage to see our true selves.

Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen was invited to attend the 2019 Geek Park Innovation Conference and delivered a speech: "A responsible manager has an important responsibility, which is to push subordinates from the height of ignorance to despair. As for whether you can climb the slope of enlightenment, it depends on your destiny."

This speech went viral in the industry, and also made the following picture popular - a famous professor in psychology. Dunning-Kruger Effect, many managers forwarded this to express their approval.

Wang Huiwen disassembled this picture into three stages:

The first stage: **** initially reaches the peak of ignorance.

The second stage: **** falls from the peak of ignorance to the valley of despair.

The third stage: ****From the valley of despair to the slope of enlightenment and then to the path of master.

Regarding why most people do not take the path of masters in the end, Wang Huiwen said:

Based on my past personal experience, I think that most people have not completed the journey from ignorance. In the process from the top to the valley of despair, most people encounter difficulties at this stage.

Among them, the main difficulty is that when they are at the peak of ignorance, they do not know that they are at the peak of ignorance, and they may even feel that they are in the valley of despair.

But one thing is very important. According to my observation, although most people do not know that they are at the top of ignorance, most people know that others are at the top of ignorance.

People can see very clearly who is at the top of ignorance, but no one knows that they are at the top of ignorance, which creates a very large information asymmetry.

The reason why you don’t know that you are at the top of ignorance is because everyone does not receive effective feedback in the process of growing up. No one tells him that you are at the top of ignorance now.

Therefore, it is very important and rare for everyone to get effective feedback from themselves at the top of ignorance. But if we think about it further, why many people don’t get this feedback, because others don’t have this responsibility.

The reasons for the "peak of ignorance"

What exactly does "the peak of ignorance" refer to?

The peak of ignorance is actually a typical state of cognitive bias.

People at the "peak of ignorance" show ignorance, but they do not know that they are ignorant and often feel good about themselves.

There are two main reasons why this self-perception bias occurs:

1. This is related to the benchmark that everyone chooses when evaluating themselves.

When everyone evaluates themselves, the first thing they call out is self-information, that is, they first think about "how they are", and then use self-information as a benchmark to judge others and evaluate "how others are", because the judgment benchmarks are different. , it is easy to have the illusion that one is very capable.

2. Everyone lacks information about the true abilities of others in their own relatively inferior areas. Because you have low ability, it is not easy for you to understand people with higher ability than you, so you cannot recognize many of the great things about others. Moreover, when making evaluations, what is most easily evoked are your strengths, and what you compare is It's someone else's shortcomings, and it's easy to show confidence in such a comparison.

The discovery of the "Dak Effect"

People often say, "Always compete with your peers, and don't argue with fools." As your experience increases, you will become more and more knowledgeable. The more I understand the truth of this sentence. Because there is scientific discovery, people with brain disabilities really don’t realize that they are brain-dead.

One day in 1995, a thief named Wheeler robbed a bank in Pennsylvania, USA, at gunpoint in broad daylight. Since he was not wearing any mask, it didn't take long for the police to find Wheeler's door after calling out the surveillance and successfully arrested him.

Wheeler was still confused when he was arrested: "How did you find me? I had lemon juice on my face!"

Later, according to the person in charge of the case, According to the police officer's investigation, Wheeler watched TV and learned that lemon juice can make writing invisible when written on paper, and can slowly reveal the words after heating. So he was convinced that applying lemon juice on the face would be the same as long as it was kept away from hot places. It can achieve an "invisible effect" that cannot be captured by the camera.

Perhaps, this story is incredible to us, but this is not a joke, but a real case. This thief's ignorance is not an extreme minority, but rather ubiquitous.

In 1999, Cornell University psychology professor David Dunning and his student Kruger conducted a series of studies on this phenomenon and found that: in terms of humor and writing, Those who are least capable in terms of ability and logic always overestimate themselves.

When they actually scored only 12, they thought they scored above 60. This further confirms the two professors’ thoughts: People who lack the most knowledge and skills are the least able to recognize their own shortcomings.

Since then, this phenomenon of people not realizing their ignorance has been called the Dak Effect.

Interestingly, this research actually won the "Ig Nobel Prize" in 2001. When people who don't understand the situation see the word "funny", they may immediately think of something like "nonsensical". But this Ig Nobel Prize is really not a joke. The award judges are all academic celebrities.

Originally the English name of the award was supposed to be the "Alternative Nobel Prize", but gradually it was translated into the "Ig Nobel Prize".

The "Dak Effect" phenomenon is everywhere

The Dak Effect is essentially a phenomenon of cognitive bias, which refers to irrational people making "irreconsiderate decisions" "Drawing wrong conclusions on the basis of "but unable to recognize his own shortcomings and unable to identify wrong behavior.

These people who lack ability are immersed in the illusory advantages created by themselves and often overestimate their own ability level, but they are unable to objectively evaluate the abilities of others.

In short, the more ignorant a person is, the smarter they think they are - not lying or trying to show off, but really feeling that way from the bottom of their hearts!

This is not just about ignorant people. People with average ability are often more likely to have strong overestimation, because they have more or less advantages in one or two dimensions, and they are more likely to "expand".

This phenomenon is actually very scary if you think about it carefully, because everyone may overestimate themselves without knowing it.

In the Song Dynasty, there was a county magistrate named Zhong Ruoweng. His calligraphy was poor, but he thought he was very good at it. Wherever he went, he would always criticize the inscriptions on famous plaques and find ways to rewrite them himself.

One day, he saw the four characters "Dinghui Pavilion" on the inscription on the attic of a temple, but the name at the inscription was covered by dust and could not be seen clearly.

He criticized it again and asked someone to take off the plaque and let him re-give it the words. Due to his status as a county magistrate, even though his officials and monks thought the inscription was well written, they did not dare to disobey it.

However, after wiping off the dust, I found that the name of Yan Zhenqing, a great calligrapher of the generation, was clearly written on the signature. Zhong Ruoweng was embarrassed for a while, and then said to his staff: "It would be a pity not to engrave such a good word into an inscription."

After reading this story, you may say that modern people are better than Ancient people were well-informed and would not have experienced such embarrassing situations.

In fact, this is not the case. Since ancient times, everyone’s cognitive radius has been limited, and this phenomenon of unawareness will still occur in areas that they are not good at.

"Jimmy Show" once performed a prank at a music festival in Texas. The reporter randomly interviewed two girls and asked: "What do you think of the Doctor Shlomo band?" The girl replied, "It is my favorite band!" "Yes, it is very dry this year!"

But, this The band's name was made up by a reporter. It was named after a Broadway opera. In fact, the band did not exist at all.

"People who go to the music festival are proud to know the next step, even if they don't actually understand what the new content is."

These are typical "da "gram effect", this phenomenon is actually very common in life.

The adverse effects of the "Dak Effect"

The Dak Effect is equivalent to the "frog in the well".

Many people may feel a little disdainful when others have achieved something, thinking that it is nothing great and they can do it themselves.

To give a simple example, when you see someone else giving a speech on stage and talking eloquently, you think it is a small case, but when it is your turn to take the stage, you are extremely nervous and forget all the words in your speech. .

Another example is asking students to estimate their scores after taking a test. Students with better scores will estimate their scores more accurately, while students with worse scores will often estimate their own scores much higher than their actual scores.

The same thing will happen to drivers - the worse their driving skills are, the more they think they can play "Fast and Furious 8".

In some fields, people with insufficient abilities neither realize their own shortcomings nor mistakenly underestimate the abilities of others. They often develop an illusory sense of self-superiority and mistakenly believe that they are better than others. The real thing is better.

To put it simply, it is what we usually call "feeling good about oneself", "the ignorant are fearless" or "having a high opinion of oneself".

If this phenomenon were placed in daily life, it would be fine. At most, it would be a fearless narcissistic mentality of an ignorant person, and it would not have a greater impact.

But if we focus on important matters, for example, if a low-quality doctor feels that he knows everything, the patient will eventually become a victim; for another example, if some low-quality politicians cannot recognize themselves , and finally exaggerating one's own judgment is likely to bring "disaster" to a group of people.

The Dak Effect also reveals a phenomenon: the **** one-fifth effect. The so-called one-fifth effect means that no matter how outrageous something is, one-fifth of the people in the world will always believe it.

In other words, no matter what outrageous things you say in this society, one in five people will believe it.

This is why some people are still deceived by scam calls that most people think are lame.

What the "Dak Effect" teaches us

Many times, ignorance often brings people self-confidence rather than the pursuit of knowledge. Just like the coastline of an isolated island, your knowledge is the area of ??the island. The more things you know, the longer your coastline is, and the greater the unexplored ocean you can touch.

A student of the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea once asked for advice: "Teacher, your knowledge is many times more than mine, and your answers to questions are very correct, but you Why do you always have doubts about your own answers?"

Zeno drew two circles, one large and one small, on the table, pointed at the two circles and said: "The area of ??the large circle is My knowledge, the area of ??the small circle is your knowledge, I know more than you.

The outside of these two circles is the part of your ignorance. The perimeter of the big circle is longer than the small circle. , therefore, I have been exposed to more areas of ignorance than you. This is why I often doubt myself."

Zeno's point of view was later summarized in a famous saying: The more you know, the better you are. Can discover one's own ignorance.

Confucius said, "Those who know others are wise, and those who know themselves are wise." "Knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing." Socrates said, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." This is why many knowledgeable people are very humble and low-key, because the more profound they see, the more aware they are of their own shortcomings.

If we use reverse thinking to talk about this problem, how should we avoid letting ourselves fall into such a giant baby state?

1. Keep an open mind and admit your ignorance. When encountering something, don't make subjective assumptions first, and don't cut off the opportunity to understand the ins and outs of the matter at the beginning. You should open up your mind and seriously think about whether the matter is within your circle of competence. If not, please admit your ignorance and Try to expand your knowledge as much as possible.

2. Face yourself and listen carefully to the opinions of others. Due to the instinct of competition in nature, in the process of competition, we tend to attack other people's shortcomings and ignore other people's strengths. We are even blindly confident, criticize others, and use other people's "ignorance" to improve our own decision-making ability. In fact, this is a kind of tunnel effect. You bring yourself into a narrow field of vision, blind your eyes, and what you see naturally becomes more and more short-sighted.

3. Don’t make decisions too quickly. Maybe you can be regarded as a person with expert opinions in the company, class, or club, but there are people outside the world. There are some things that you may have never touched upon in your life, and even within your field of expertise, you are not qualified to be the top expert. Therefore, when making a decision, please remain rational and vigilant, and think carefully before making a decision.

In short, people need to first fall from the peak of ignorance to the valley of despair, and then climb hard from the valley of despair, withstand attacks and insults, and accumulate knowledge and experience before they can become wise men and masters.