Why do we always overestimate ourselves?

1995, in broad daylight, a big middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in Pittsburgh, USA. Surprisingly, he didn't wear a mask or make any disguise. After the robbery, he smiled smugly at the camera in front of the bank and then walked out of the bank.

These obvious clues led the police to the robber, 44-year-old Wheeler. Wheeler denied it, but the police showed him the most powerful evidence: surveillance video. Wheeler looked at himself in the video, widened his eyes in surprise and muttered, "But my face is obviously covered with lemon juice."

It turns out that Wheeler has a little knowledge of chemistry. He knows that the acidity of lemon juice can turn it into invisible ink. Writing on bright white paper with lemon juice is invisible, but when the paper coated with dried lemon juice is heated, the lemon juice will oxidize and turn brown, and the information will appear. According to this principle, Wheeler believes that after applying lemon juice to his face, he should be completely invisible as long as he is not close to the heat source, and the camera should not take pictures of his face.

Writing with lemon juice can be invisible, but it can't make a person's facial contour and five senses invisible. Therefore, when Wheeler said that his logic was like a god, the police were equally dumbfounded. However, they quickly ruled out the possibility that Wheeler was a drug addict or a psychopath.

This true story has become the talk of everyone after dinner. People called the robber the stupidest man in history and wrote all kinds of jokes to laugh at him. However, Cornell University psychologist David? Deng Ning and Justin? Kruger studied this phenomenon carefully and found a famous psychological phenomenon: Deng Ning-Kruger effect.

The famous Deng Ning-Kruger effect.

The Deng Ning-Kruger effect says that people with lower abilities are more likely to be overconfident and wrongly overestimate themselves because they lack self-awareness.

In order to verify this phenomenon, Deng Ning and Kruger did a series of experiments. In a study, some college students were asked some questions, which covered a wide range of topics, including grammar, logic and jokes. After each student answered, he was asked to evaluate his grades and his ranking. Interestingly, in these cognitive tasks, the students with the lowest scores always overestimate their performance. The bottom four students are estimated to have better grades than the other two-thirds students!

This kind of "virtual superiority" of people with low ability also extends outside the classroom and penetrates into daily life. In the follow-up study, when Deng Ning and Kruger left the laboratory for social investigation, they found similar results. For example, when they ask gun lovers about the safety of guns, those with the lowest correct answers obviously overestimate their knowledge of guns.

People with low energy are not only blindly confident in the cognition of basic facts, but also easily optimistic in other aspects of personal ability. For example, in some reality shows such as Looking for a Big Star, the performers are mixed, but those who perform badly never realize their incompetence. After being rejected by the judges, they are often disappointed and make a scene. Although we will feel funny when we see such behavior, these people really don't know that they are confused by virtual superiority.

Knowing the Deng Ning-Kruger effect, we can easily explain some phenomena in life. For example, people who have no sense of humor think they are humorous, while ordinary-looking people overestimate their looks. In the relationship between men and women, some people overestimate themselves and think that girls must appreciate themselves very much. They were extremely angry after being hastily rejected.

Deng Ning-Kruger effect is not a mental problem, but a cognitive deviation, which is a common mistake that human beings are very easy to make, and verifies Darwin's statement that "ignorance leads to confidence more easily than knowledge".

Blind inferiority complex

The Deng Ning-Kruger effect also includes another opposite aspect: people with very high abilities tend to underestimate their abilities.

Have you noticed these phenomena in your life? In the interview, some people will be extremely anxious even if they are very capable. If they beat other interviewers and get the job they want, they will feel very inferior and think that the leader may regret choosing himself because he is incompetent.

In learning, some students get high marks, and they will be very uneasy, fearing that teachers will pay more attention to themselves and they will not get the same results in the next exam. Faced with compliments from others, they often can't accept them happily. I am afraid of revealing my true level in the next exam.

And some girls are obviously good-looking, but they always feel that there is something wrong with their faces. They are going to Korea to have a knife, so that they can look good and feel at ease.

These are high-powered people who underestimate their performance. These people are obviously excellent and have their own talents, but they suffer from "impostor syndrome", or they regard their success as external factors such as luck, rather than what they deserve, or they don't see their own advantages, and they are always on tenterhooks.

People with low ability overestimate themselves because they have a wrong understanding of themselves; The reason why high-powered people underestimate themselves is often because they misjudge others. They often think that what they think is easy is easy for others to do, and what they own will be owned by others.

Blind self-confidence can make people make a lot of jokes. People with low ability can't see their own shortcomings, and it's easy to learn with an open mind, so they can't make progress. The blind inferiority of people with high ability can easily make them extremely anxious, miss important opportunities and limit their ability to play.

So, how can we avoid the Deng Ning-Kruger effect? Psychologists suggest that people with weak abilities should realize that many of their ideas are wrong and learn to reevaluate their abilities. For those who are very capable but not confident, you might as well give up your confidence and try something more challenging. After all, when you realize that your ability is insufficient, it means that you are actually very capable.