Aesoph Group

By Christopher Aesoph, MA

       The most incompetent people are the least likely to know it, and the more knowledgeable you are, the more likely you are to underestimate your talent and capacity.

In a survey of engineers at one company, for example, 42 percent thought their work ranked in the top five percent among their peers¹, a fact that could easily impede their motivation to improve. Elderly people tend to believe they are ‘‘above average’’ drivers², a perception that is, in reality, associated with being labeled an unsafe driver³. Even academics are not immune. A survey of college professors revealed that 94 percent thought they do ‘‘above average’’ work—a figure that defies mathematical plausibility⁴. 

While we all promote the idea of trust, what this information reveals is that in the real world of business—or anyplace else, for that matter—taking people at face value, or investing your trust in them based solely on what they say about themselves—is a fool’s game. Nearly every manager has had the experience of hearing from an inexperienced interview candidate their belief that they can handle anything. Not that the candidate can learn to handle it, but that they can handle it now, today. The best manager’s maxim based on this data is, “Trust, and verify.”

People who are incompetent are too ignorant to know it. For example, students performing in the bottom 25 percent among their peers on tests of grammar, logical reasoning, and humor tended to think that they are performing above the 60th percentile⁵. Further, this pattern has been conceptually replicated among undergraduates completing a classroom exam⁶, students assessing their interviewing skills⁷, clerks evaluating their performance⁸, and laboratory technicians evaluating their on-the-job expertise⁹. Kruger and Dunning say this gross overconfidence occurs because those who lack skill are not in a position to accurately recognize the magnitude of their deficits.

Interestingly, the incompetent are not alone in their difficulty with accurate self-assessment. These same studies suggest top performers consistently underestimate how superior their performances are relative to their peers. In Kruger and Dunning studies, the top 25 percent tended to think their skills lay in the 70th–75th percentile, although their performances fell roughly in the 87th percentile. Kruger and Dunning found that exposing top performers to how their peers performed on the same task caused them to recognize, in part, how exceptional their performances were relative to their peers¹⁰.

Based on these studies, the safest conclusions to draw are: 1) stay humble, and 2) keep seeking new knowledge. Once you begin thinking you are remarkable, you’re in dangerous territory. First of all, you’re in the same zone with the incompetents, and second, you are less likely to look for new information, because you believe you already know enough. If you stay hungry for new knowledge, perhaps you’ll come to the happy realization of your true level of incompetence—a happy moment because now your ignorance will no longer be used against you.

By the way, if you spent this article chuckling about all the incompetent people you have to deal with, guess what? You’re already too arrogant for your own good.

Summary Source:  Morris, Errol (2010-06-20). "The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)". Opinionator: Exclusive Online Commentary From The Times. New York Times. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1