It is known that over time a person develops certain patterns of behavior, responses, stereotypical actions. However, thinking can also be stereotyped. Due to the fact that our consciousness seeks to simplify its life as much as possible, it creates certain patterns, under which it adjusts the surrounding reality. Often these stereotypes have nothing to do with reality, but they continue to "order" our lives with enviable persistence. These stereotypical thought patterns are called "cognitive biases" and greatly simplify conscious activity by quickly labeling certain situations. An example of such stereotyping is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which clearly proves the validity of the statement: "Woe is from the mind!"
The more you know, the more you realize that you don't know anything
Surely many highly educated people striving for constant self-education caught themselves thinking that they still have a sea of the unknown, and all their skills are just a drop in this sea, and there is still so much to learn … And at the same time, at every step we meet, softlyspeaking, not the most competent people who for some reason are unshakably confident in their competence and authority. Such people rarely bother with the problem of obtaining additional knowledge, but at the same time they strive to show their expert opinion at any opportunity. To describe such people in social psychology, there is a special term - the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Description of the phenomenon
The above-mentioned people, due to their incompetence, often make mistakes (mainly in production), but they will never admit their guilt in this, or rather, they will not consider the limitations of their knowledge to be the reason for wrong decisions. Such individuals are characterized by a reassessment of their own knowledge, skills and abilities. They are unable to accept that someone else might be more qualified and worth learning from. They also never admit their ignorance. However, the Kruger effect extends to the other extreme: highly skilled professionals tend to downplay their abilities, they are less self-confident and painstakingly analyze every decision.
Dunning-Kruger effect: causes of distortion
Why is this happening? It would seem that ignorance should not inspire confidence, but it happens. Most likely it's about compensation. Since mediocre intellectual abilities do not allow such people to realize a sense of self-importance, they compensate for their lack of knowledge with high conceit and confidence. Moreover, the ignorance of the described persons is always visible to others, but they themselves -no. They truly believe they are giving an expert opinion.
In fact, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a serious problem in the modern world, as enterprises increasingly encounter carriers of this cognitive distortion, which does not have the best effect on the quality of production. Moreover, not only the world of work is affected by this effect. Poorly educated people express their "authoritative" opinion in many other areas: politics, social life and the like.
