The Most Incompetent Robber
On January 6, 1995, McArthur Wheeler carried out an ingenious plan: Robbed two banks at gunpoint with no disguise except the lemon juice he applied on his face. The lemon juice, he believed, would make him invincible to security camera as it was used in the making of invincible ink.
Although sceptical about lemon juice prior to this moment, he tested it by taking a picture of his lemon juiced-face with a camera. He was convinced when his face didn’t show on the photograph. Detectives believe his face didn’t show due to either bad film, a maladjusted camera or just Wheeler unintentionally pointing the camera away from his face.
Days after the robbery, an hour after the 11pm news, he was arrested and escorted into the police car while repeating the words “But I wore the lemon juice, I wore the lemon juice.” He went on to be the most incompetent criminal and also inspired a psychological phenomenon, the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect was coined in 1999 by two Cornell University psychologists, David Dunning, PhD and Justin Kruger, PhD, describing Arthur Wheeler’s incompetency. David dunning explained “If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber-that is, his stupidity protected him from awareness of his own stupidity.”
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological phenomenon where people with low abilities tend to unduly overestimate their abilities. Simply put, people who fail at logical quizzes failed to see their incompetency; a double-burden account of lack of skill and ignorance of this lack. Ditto, people with high competency tend to underrate their performances.
The Dunning-Kruger effect was formerly focused on grammar, logic and social skills and later went on to include ranges of fields like medicine, politics, aviation, spatial memory, exams in schools and literacy.
In an interview, Dunning explained “The first rule of Dunning-Kruger effect is you don’t know you are a member of the club.”
We all are victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The D-K effect is not here to point out our incompetency but rather to show the human condition; not knowing the scope of your ignorance is a big part of your imperfection as a human.
How then do we curb this effect?
Intellectually humble people have also shown to exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect, a delicious irony. Such people have been anecdotal and a little neurotic about their knowledge in different areas of life. This, of course isn’t healthy and can’t work for everyone. Confidence in the right knowledge was their secret method to getting the right results; being compulsive about it. Other methods of overcoming the effect include:
· Educating and enlightening oneself. Acquire the knowledge and skills required to get the right results. Think through all matters, practice critical thinking.
· Be open to criticism. Mostly to constructive ones as destructive criticism only brings you to a downward spiral rather than filling you with the right information.
· Check your facts, assumptions and ideas. There are lots of facts-based ideas you can always find on the internet to help you.
· View other people’s perspective. Discuss, schmooze, chat with people with the right intellect. No one’s an island. Interact with experts, learn how they act, tackle and use their skills. It is interaction with experts we can get the right knowledge and take us far away from the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The D-K effect helps identify the illusion of expertise casted by inexperience, only humilty and true knowledge can save us from it. So the next time someone who acknowledges little expertise in a subject, but claims confidence about it at the same time, remember the D-K effect. And save yourself trouble by agreeing to disagree, as people who suffer this delusion will not be convinced by evidence or reason.
