Growth Liabilities Pt. 2: Dunning-Kruger

This series of articles on our growth liabilities is meant to bring awareness to the natural human tendencies that may stunt your growth as a fully actualized adult. Don’t let it disappoint you. Rather, once you know that you’re prone to behave this way, you have the power of choice.

Our second installment calls attention to a classic human phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is a human tendency to overestimate our abilities. In other words, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias of illusory superiority. I hate to break it to you, but you likely think you know more than you do.

Why does this phenomenon happen? Ironically, self-awareness is a trait that is won with hard earned development. This sets the stage then for lower ability individuals to naturally have less awareness. With less awareness, you likely don’t have an accurate view of your abilities. This is where the overestimation comes in.

What’s the liability in this phenomenon? Well, you can imagine the odd trouble of having the least capable people thinking they are more evolved than they are and, conversely, the most evolved people having greater awareness of how much they aren’t capable of. Ultimately, the people that need development most think they need it the least, thus creating a vicious cycle.

What is foundational to development is a curiosity about how we may be wrong or lacking understanding. Therefore, it would pay developmental dividends to manually remove the limiting beliefs the Dunning-Kruger Effect sets in motion. 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach