The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Written By: coach on October 5, 2011 No Comment

Do you realise that improving your body composition has just as much to do with psychology and sociology as well as physiology.

There is a well-known psychological effect that may be causing you problems with attaining your fitness goals.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their INCOMPETENCE denies them the metacognitive ability to recognise their mistakes.
The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as ABOVE AVERAGE, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled UNDERRATE their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.
Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
Kruger and Dunning conclude, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.

The effect is about paradoxical defects in cognitive ability, in oneself and others.

So what that all means is that there are two sides to this effect, both causing you stress.

The second side, has to do with you DOWNPLAYING your own competence because you ASSUME that everyone else is just as competent or BETTER.

This is very important to note.

The first side deals with that fact that most Coaches have NO COMPETENCE, especially when it comes to explaining “why” things work. Sure, they can get results, but lets be honest, getting results from an obese, unfit person isn’t exactly rocket science. However, the INCOMPETENCE comes when they try to EXPLAIN WHY IT WORKED.

Now, take the INCOMPETENCE of the Coach and couple that with your ASSUMPTION that others are just as competent or more competent than you are and you have a mis-understanding of epic proportions.

In other words, the Coach vastly OVERESTIMATES their own competence and ability while you vastly UNDERESTIMATE
your own competence and ability.

So even though have the knowledge to figure it out – you keep searching for the secret, because you ASSUME that somehow they all know something that you don’t!

Can you see how stressful that can be?

This isn’t just related to health and fitness either. It’s prolific, everywhere. You could even say governments are being run like this.

The point is, just be very aware when you’re slipping into this Dunning-Kruger effect.