Do You Know What You Don’t Know? How to Overcome the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Expand Your Security Expertise

In utility physical security practice, professionalism comes from knowing what to do, why it needs to be done and how to do it. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? However, gaining and maintaining true professional competency, or edge, requires continual effort. In our quest for professionalism we have to overcome a plethora of obstacles to success, some self-imposed, some constructed by others. One significant obstacle that we all must conquer is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias[1] that manifests as excessive self-confidence in abilities that a person does not possess in reality.

It occurs when people with little or no knowledge of a subject or skill overestimate their expertise. They don’t recognize their own incompetence and are convinced that they’re subject-matter experts. David Dunning and Justin Kruger first described this phenomenon in a paper published in 1999, but others had noticed it long before them.

Dunning and Kruger also identified an interesting circular mental error: “When you don’t know something, you also don’t have the ability to recognize that you don’t know it.” This peculiar thought processing error was recognized as a problem as far back as Charles Darwin when he stated, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect

We’ve all encountered the Dunning-Kruger effect and we’ve all fallen victim to it ourselves. From time to time, everyone mistakenly believes that they know more about a subject than they actually do and proclaim expertise about the subject that they do not possess. Remember, no one is an expert at everything.

The Dunning-Kruger effect often manifests both at home and at work. At home, it frequently appears during holiday gatherings with extended family, especially when discussing controversial topics. A family member will confidently speak at length about a subject despite having an obvious lack of knowledge about it. They’ll stubbornly cling to their viewpoint and dismiss opposing opinions as foolish, uninformed, or simply wrong. Sound familiar?

At work, it appears in a variety of forms, from overconfident but clueless supervisors and managers providing impossible and impractical directives to co-workers who believe they are better qualified to carry out a specific task or assignment. In any work setting, the Dunning-Kruger effect can be damaging; in the physical security realm, it can be lethal.

What causes the effect to occur?

In their academic paper, Dunning and Kruger took a rather critical approach to assessing the study’s participants and the cause of the effect. They stated that not only are people incompetent, but they are so inept that they actually believe their incompetence is a sign of ability.

In the study, Dunning suggested that the lack of skill and expertise created a two-pronged problem. First, people’s actual performance of the assigned task was poor at best. Second, their bias made them unable to recognize just how poorly they performed and they were often enthusiastic about their performance. Basically, the effect is the outcome of egotistical incompetence.

So, why is the Dunning-Kruger effect a problem?

The skills and knowledge required to excel at a task are also the ones needed to recognize incompetence in that task. So if a person lacks the skills to do a task, they’ll also be unaware of their ability to accomplish it. Instead, they will tend to –

1. Not recognize their lack of skill or overestimate their actual level of skill
2. Fail to accept their mistakes
3. Refuse to recognize the genuine skill and expertise of others

A Little Knowledge Breeds Overconfidence

As the old saying goes, “a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” This is another factor that impacts the Dunning-Kruger effect. Often, a person with minimal knowledge of a subject believes that they have mastery over it and believe themselves to be an expert.

This can have disastrous consequences in the security field. People with expertise in a closely aligned field will often believe their expertise in one field translates directly to the other. In reality, this is seldom the case. This is especially true of those with law enforcement and military backgrounds. Though both are closely related to fields, they are distinctly different professions. And they both require adjustments in thinking and different skill sets when making the transition.

We have to be aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect in ourselves and in others

The Dunning-Kruger effect affects everyone. Regardless of how knowledgeable or experienced we are, we all have areas where we lack expertise. No one is an expert in everything. For example, an individual who is an expert in one area might mistakenly believe that their expertise automatically translates to other areas.

How to Overcome the Dunning-Kruger Effect

To overcome this phenomenon, we need to recognize our own incompetence. The key is to be aware of the effect and filter our thoughts and conclusions through this knowledge.

We should be mindful of the effect in ourselves and in others. When we recognize it in others, we can use our knowledge of the effect to develop solutions and workarounds without challenging the other person’s perspectives.

When it comes to ourselves, we should limit our responses to subjects and assess our actual knowledge of the subject. It’s important to acknowledge that the effect is always in the background and make a deliberate effort to delve into the subject deeply enough to overcome the phenomenon before assuming the role of an expert.

What happens when you realize that the phenomenon is occurring and begin to acquire the necessary expertise? When you first notice the effect, you may initially lose confidence in yourself regarding the subject. However, as you gain experience and knowledge, a genuine level of confidence will develop, granting you both true expertise and valid self-confidence.

Takeaways

The Dunning-Kruger effect is just one of the many cognitive biases that can impact our behaviors and decisions. While it’s always easier to spot this phenomenon in others, it’s important to remember that it affects us as well.

Recognizing the Dunning-Kruger effect as a cognitive bias that can hinder our information-processing abilities can help us overcome its tendencies and make better decisions. It’s not easy to identify our own issues, but it’s important to take the time and effort to recognize and overcome this personal obstacle to success.

About the Author: Jim Willis is president of InDev Tactical, a security training and consulting firm. He is a utility engineer, industry professional, credentialed homeland security specialist and anti-terrorism expert. If you want to discuss utility-focused security training or consulting assistance, you can reach Jim at 703-623-6819 or jim.willis@indevtactical.net.

[1] Cognitive biases are subconscious errors in thinking that can distort perceptions of reality and lead to inaccurate decision-making.