1.8 We Are All Confident Idiots

One of the key reasons to become educated and gather expertise is to take advantage of the knowledge and apply it to new experiences or challenges. Many people spend years honing their skills and making themselves more experienced or knowledgeable about an area or discipline. Ironically, the more experience that people have the more those same people begin to realize how much they do not actually know. On the other hand, people with relatively little knowledge or experience will often over-estimate their expertise and capability and will often make mistakes that experts would avoid. All people regardless of their intelligence are subject to this phenomenon. It is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect and we are going to examine how it works and what you can do to defeat it.

This article is the best summary of this very interesting theory.

We are going to examine some of the reasons that people so often get "it" wrong when they think they have "it" right. In order to examine these miss-steps we will need to define what types of errors or bias people have when they make decisions.

Dunning-Krugger and the Library of Bias

Use this link to answer questions and research specific types of biases that are common to all people.

Listening Segment- Please listen to this audio story from "This American Life" about the psychology of over-confidence.