Firefly News Flash, July 2018, The Firefly Group

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July 2018
Question Your Confidence

Say It Quick a thoughtful message in exactly 99 words	Discoveries bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate	Ideas fuel for your own continuous learning	Activities tips and tricks you can try today
Cautiously Confident - Self-Assurance and defining success	Under Informed but Overconfident - The Dunning-Kruger effect	Confidence and Ability - Thinking about how skilled you are	Match That Quote - Gauge your own confidence

Say It Quick

Competent people radiate confidence, right? Then why does it seem that the person with the most confidence sometimes has the least knowledge or skill? How can a person who is all talk and no substance rise to the top? It may be such a person is exhibiting the Dunning-Kruger effect. Learn more about this cognitive bias and how it can affect your team beginning with the 99-Word Story in this issue of the Firefly News Flash.

Cautiously Confident
We were planning a two-week trip to Spain: loads of long-time friends, great food, sights to see, curious cultural differences to explore. I was excited. But I was also worried. With no natural situations in which to practice, my Spanish had atrophied. How could I possibly carry a conversation in a culture that thrived on talking and arguing?

Frantically I reread old class notes, reviewed flash cards, studied conjugation charts. My anxiety rose steadily. The more I practiced, the less I knew!

But wait, I'd done this before; could do it again. I'll define my own successes!

Discoveries

Under Informed but Overconfident
The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Lemon juice.

Kids make invisible ink with it. Write with lemon juice on paper and your message disappears. Cool! Hey what if you put it on your face? Would you become invisible too? Not likely!

But one day in 1995, McArthur Wheeler was so confident of the unique properties of lemon juice that he used it to rob a bank. Actually, he robbed two banks in the same day. Redolent of citrus, he walked into two Pittsburgh banks fully confident the video cameras would not be able to "see" his face covered in lemon juice. He was wrong. Police arrested him later the same day when surveillance camera images were shown on the news.

Wheeler's overconfidence in a topic of which he was totally ignorant led psychologists David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kruger, now at New York University's Stern School of Business to study what is now known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In this cognitive bias, people of low intelligence or ability in a topic over estimate their own competence.

Dunning and Kruger found that people with low ability overrate their prowess. As a result, their overconfidence sometimes leads them to risky, and in Wheeler's case, illegal activities.

In one experiment, Dunning and Kruger asked people to rate the level of humor of a series of jokes. Their choices were compared to a ranking of the jokes by an expert panel to determine their ability to judge humor. The participants were also asked to rate their ability as compared to other participants. Those who were the poorest in their ability to judge humor were also the people who thought they were the best judges. Those who actually were better judges rated themselves slightly less capable as humor experts.

This and other studies revealed that people with low ability spoke with so much confidence because they didn't know what they didn't know. People with high ability knew the complexity of their field as well as the limits of their expertise so spoke with less confidence.

Metacognition, thinking about one's own thinking, is a key component of the Dunning-Kruger effect. People with less ability yet more confidence in their competence, were worse at thinking critically about their own mental processes. Those with more ability and less confidence were better at metacognition.

More Information:
"Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments," Kruger, Justin and Dunning, David, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. 1121-1134.

"Those Who Can't Don't Know It," Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2005/12/those-who-cant-dont-know-it

"Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To" by Dean Burnett, W.W. Norton and Company, © 2016.

Ideas

Confidence and Ability
Thinking about how skilled you are

Confidence is a curious thing. We tend to believe people who express their knowledge and abilities with self-assurance. We give them credibility simply because they seem so sure of what they are talking about. But the Dunning-Kruger effect demonstrates that we should be cautious.

When someone acts decisively, perhaps we should ask for supporting evidence for their decision. When someone volunteers for a high-visibility task, maybe we should review their work plan before the project is launched.

Admittedly, there are many factors that make it difficult to determine whether a person is confident because they are over-rating their ability. Supervisors and CEOs can be hard to challenge. Politicians can be hard to pin down. Religious leaders wear a mantle of spirituality. Trainers profess a level of authority.

Perhaps we can start with ourselves.

What is something you have high confidence about? Is it possible you are overestimating your knowledge, skill, courage, endurance, ethical standards, analytical abilities, etc.? How might you test whether you are overrating your ability? How could you learn about what you yet need to learn?

When do you worry that you might not be as competent as you should be? Is this an instance when you need not be so concerned about your performance? How can you determine whether you are underrating your ability? Is this a situation, like the 99-Word Story, when you can determine your own definition of success?

Activities

Match That Quote
Gauge your own confidence

Here is an activity that attempts to imitate the experiments that defined the Dunning-Kruger effect. Ideally, we would have data from many people so that you could compare your confidence level with them. But let's at least experiment with the concept in a playful way.

In this activity, you must match a quotation with its author. There are eight quotes and eight authors. (The quotations used in this activity are from Wikipedia.) You can play this game by clicking the highlighted links or by downloading a PDF HERE.

Match That Quote

Step One: Guess about your own competence. Look at the Preview List of eight authors. Make a guess about how many you can correctly match to their quotation. Write this number down.

Step Two: Estimate your confidence. How certain are you that you can make the number of correct matches in your prediction of Step One? Rate yourself as either Not Confident, Mildly Confident, or Highly Confident.

Step Three: Make the matches. Look at the Matching List and connect authors to their quotations.

Step Four: Check your answers. Compare your answers to the Answer Key and compare your score with your predicted score in Step One.

Step Five: Dunning-Kruger effect. What correlation is there between your actual score (your ability) and the confidence you had in your predicted score? Was your ability low and your confidence high? Was your ability high but your confidence low?

There is nothing scientific about this activity. It's just a game. But does it add relevance to the questions asked in the Ideas section of this News Flash? If you gained some insights, !

Preview List

How many authors can you match to their quotation? Your Guess:

1. Confucius (551-479 BC)

2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

3. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

4. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

5. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

6. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

7. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

8. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

What is your level of confidence about your guess? Choose One:

Not Confident | Mildly Confident | Highly Confident

Back to Instructions

Matching List

1. Confucius (551-479 BC) a. "A little learning is a dangerous thing."

2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) b. "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

3. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) c. "For men of true learning, and almost universal knowledge, always compassionate [pity] the ignorance of others; but fellows who excel in some little, low, contemptible art, are always certain to despise those who are unacquainted with that art."

4. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) d. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

5. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) e. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

6. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) f. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

7. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) g. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

8. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) h. "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Back to Instructions

Answer Key

1. Confucius (551-479 BC) b. "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) d. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

3. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) a. "A little learning is a dangerous thing."

4. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) c. "For men of true learning, and almost universal knowledge, always compassionate [pity] the ignorance of others; but fellows who excel in some little, low, contemptible art, are always certain to despise those who are unacquainted with that art."

5. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) g. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

6. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) e. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

7. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) f. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

8. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) h. "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Back to Instructions

If you like what you have read in this issue, I would like to bring the same innovation, creativity, and playfulness to your next meeting or learning event.

Whether you need a keynote speaker, or help with strategic planning, performance improvement, or training facilitators and trainers in your organization, I look forward to your call (802.380.4360) or .

-- Brian

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1. Confucius (551-479 BC)	a. "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
2. William Shakespeare (1564-1616)	b. "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
3. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)	c. "For men of true learning, and almost universal knowledge, always compassionate [pity] the ignorance of others; but fellows who excel in some little, low, contemptible art, are always certain to despise those who are unacquainted with that art."
4. Henry Fielding (1707-1754)	d. "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
5. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)	e. "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
6. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)	f. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
7. W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)	g. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
8. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)	h. "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.