The idiot of "Weekend Psychological Talk" is particularly confident? Because you are too stupid to see your own shortcomings!

A thief swaggered into the bank, robbed the money and left, but was quickly arrested within a few hours. When the police showed him the photos of the bank monitor, he shouted incredulously, "How is it possible? My face is covered with invisible lemon juice! 」

Fools are always particularly confident. The above story sounds like a "joke", but it is actually a real event. 1995, American man McArthur Wheeler walked into two banks and robbed them unabashedly. The reason is that he thought that "writing with lemon juice on paper can't see the words, but painting on the face can make them invisible", which became a big joke at that time.

This story was included in the psychological research of two professors at Cornell University, Deng Ning and Kruger, and won the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology in 2000. This psychological effect is called Deng Ning-Kruger effect, which is also called Ducker effect for short. The core idea is "a fool doesn't know he is stupid, because he is so stupid that he doesn't have a correct understanding of himself".

In daily life, we can also see that some students are very dissatisfied with the teacher's score and think that they are better than this score. In the workplace, there will always be people who feel incompetent and the boss doesn't value themselves. They are probably people who "magnify their own advantages, but can't see their own shortcomings." During the 20 16 American election, some people thought that Trump was probably such a person because he was particularly confident.

What should I do if I can't see my blind spot? In the research of two professors, they asked a group of people in the same company to evaluate their working ability, whether they were in front of or behind everyone. As a result, people who are actually behind almost think they are in front. Kruger believes that "the intelligence of realizing one's true ability is the same as the intelligence of working ability." If a person's working ability is not good enough, of course, he will never find his own shortcomings, let alone those that are really bad. 」

But this blind spot state, like working ability, can be improved through training. You can practice making a complete list of all your thoughts when judging one thing; For example, in the medical field, such as "whether the tumor can be removed", it is not only determined by the size, but also needs to clearly understand the tissue and blood vessel distribution of the human body to make the best judgment.

Then you can discuss things with different people. People who can't see their blind spots are likely to subconsciously think that "they must be right." When they hear opinions different from their own, they will have a strong rebuttal and counterattack. But without criticism, just listen to other people's ideas, and you can gradually find out where your blind spot is.

But is the Ducker effect warning us to be modest? In fact, in addition to this kind of people with "Ducker effect", there is also a completely opposite kind of "impostor syndrome". No matter how good these people are, they feel so bad, which may be the result of overcorrection. This tells us that modesty and pride are not the best, and a complete person will accept all his strengths and weaknesses.