Is Ignorance Really Bliss? The Dunning-Kruger Effect

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Everybody doesn't know something. I would go so far as to say that most people don't know most things. With the vastness of knowledge out there in the world and the universe it's impossible to have intricate knowledge of all things. I'll never know how submarines work, or how planets came to be composed of what they are, or why people like pickles. You know the important things. These are all things I know I don't know. I'm pretty okay with that though, because I like to think I know a good amount of other things. I know how to get to work every morning, I know how to cook certain foods, and I know I really don't like pickles. These are all things I know that I know. 

So what about the things I don't know I don't know? Those things I won't know I don't have the proficiency or capacity to do, complete, or engage in until that situation arises. Only when I try to and fail is when I’ll realize those things were things I didn’t know I didn’t know. This is what ignorance is. According to David Dunning, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan in the book: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ignorance is defined as the things we don't know we don't know (or unknown unknowns).

He categorizes ignorance as both invisible to the person, and prevalent in everyday life. For example, people who engage in our democratic elections may not, and often don't, have a profound working knowledge of what the Electoral College is or how it works despite participating in it. These are important decisions that affect the trajectory of the country, yet people are unaware that they're ignorant of the process they're engaging in. To them they're voting for a candidate themselves and not a representative who will vote on their behalf but has no real obligation to do so. 

According to David Dunning, in reference to a study he conducted with Justin Kruger in 1999, people who are ignorant will have virtually no insight into their incompetence. This has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. When we have no idea we're ignorant, which we all are, we can sometimes have a false sense of security in the things that we do know. Our knowledge of everyday life can sometimes disguise our ignorance. For example we may think we know how human emotions work because we're exposed to them on a regular basis. We know how we would act when we're angry, which informs how we think other people will act when they're angry. However everybody experiences things differently, so we may think that someone is extremely angry when they're really grieving a huge loss they've just had. What we're familiar with becomes the template for how we think the world works. 

This is the dangerous thing about ignorance. When we believe we know how the world works when in actuality we don't, we make choices and decisions that could be incorrect or negatively affect others. I wrote a piece a few weeks ago that touches on ignorance in hate groups. People who grow up thinking that a certain group of people are inherently violent or lesser than them will develop this mindset that “this is just how the world is”, giving zero credence or thought to why this worldview has been cemented in their minds. Then they'll seek out other information that lines up with this worldview due to confirmation bias and surround themselves with like-minded people, causing their views to become more and more extreme, potentially driving them to aggression towards foreign ideas. 

Dunning proposes that when ignorant people are asked to evaluate the correctness of their beliefs or decisions, they almost always falsely assume they are correct. The same processes that are necessary to choose the correct response is also used to evaluate the correctness of said response. This means that people who are ignorant will often do themselves no favors because they're basing their knowledge of whether or not something is correct on what they think is correct. If what they think is correct is in fact incorrect, they will falsely evaluate something as correct because of their ignorance. 

So if someone has to determine if a sentence is grammatically correct, and they think that direct objects don't need a subject, they will falsely and unknowingly determine that a direct object doesn't in fact need a subject, making their evaluation incorrect based on their ignorance. Someone grading a paper on grammatical correctness who holds this idea will believe that "likes cake." is a grammatically correct sentence instead of "He likes cake." This person can then spread that ignorance because they think this incorrect notion about grammatical rules is true, so when asked about it to others they will only teach and pass down incorrect knowledge.

People will often get extremely defensive when confronted with the idea that they may be incorrect about how the world works. That feeling of embarrassment for being wrong, in addition to the discomfort we feel when our beliefs are challenged, causes us to sometimes lash out - not necessarily in violence (although sometimes yes in violence) but in frustration, annoyance, and defense of ourselves. We try to reason against this newfound knowledge to support our false assumption, spreading our ignorance further. However we aren’t doing any good by trying to defend an incorrect belief. We’re not adding to our pool of knowledge but shutting out correct ideas in favor of sparing our egos. One of the best skills a person can have is admitting when they're wrong. Being able to accept the idea that we don't know everything allows for truth and knowledge to become more widely spread to more people. 

This is why education is the most important thing in the world. If we can add more and more knowledge to our collection of views and beliefs, we can not only become more educated but also more tolerant of others. We can accept that we're wrong from time to time, develop empathy for others who feel that embarrassment and frustration when confronted with the truth despite what they thought was true, and try to educate them. We can understand that not everyone thinks the same way that we do, and be okay with that because that’s how you come to develop good and meaningful human interactions. While ignorance is largely inevitable and invisible, accepting that there are things we don't know we don't know is an important and necessary stepping stone to creating a more educated and tolerant world.