The Bold and the Clueless
Exploring the very real and deliciously ironic confirmation bias known as The Dunning-Kruger Effect
All Attitude, No Altitude
There’s a special kind of confidence that blossoms in the absence of competence. It’s bold. It’s brash. It’s the guy who struts into a chili cook-off with an entry made from hand-ground chuck, freshly toasted spices, and a $12 can of imported craft beer — then comes in dead last and blames the judges for lacking the refined palates required to appreciate his culinary genius.
I didn’t know it had a name back then. I just thought some people were born with a genetic predilection that made them incapable of humility. But years later, I discovered the Dunning-Kruger Effect — and suddenly, my view of some of the people around me made sense.
So what, exactly, is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?
The Science of Smugness
The story begins with two guys named McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson who decide to rob a couple of banks in Pittsburgh. What made their story unique was that neither of them made any attempts to disguise themselves during their attempt.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
Wheeler later explained that Johnson believed lemon juice — since it works as an invisible ink — could make their faces invisible to witnesses and cameras. And so, armed with the boldness that came from believing that the only possible way they could be identified was that they maybe smelled a little like salad dressing, they robbed two banks on the afternoon of January 6, 1995 ¹.
¹ These robberies would go on to set the benchmark for the stupidest thing ever done in the US on a January 6 — a record they held for 26 years, until the bar was lowered with historic, if not misplaced, enthusiasm. But I digress.
Theirs was a plan that, in spite of its unmistakable genius and flawless execution, would soon implode in spectacular fashion. The physics of light and optics being what they are, the lemon juice shockingly failed to render their faces invisible. The pair were quickly identified by eyewitnesses and caught on security camera footage, and were soon apprehended.
It was a perplexing story to say the least, and in two very distinct ways. For most folks, it was because of the stupefying method of “disguise” chosen by the robbers. But one of the robbers, himself, was baffled by the ignominious outcome. Reportedly, when shown photographs clearly placing him at the scene, a confused McArthur Wheeler exclaimed: “But I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice.”
You know, urine can be used as an invisible ink as well. Maybe you should have tried that instead, Mac.
At any rate, both men wound up in jail, leaving the rest of us to reckon that their incarceration was at least partially due to local authorities deeming them far too dimwitted to function in normal society.
Then, a few years later, the story caught the eye of a clinical psychologist from Cornell University named David Dunning. In 1999, he and a grad student named Justin Kruger published a study with the delightfully academic title: “Unskilled and Unaware of It.” Their research showed that people who perform poorly on tasks often rate their own performance far higher than reality would suggest. In short: they’re bad, and they don’t know they’re bad, because they’re too bad to know they’re bad. If that makes sense.
And, thus, the Dunning-Kruger Effect was officially born.
For the uninitiated (or the blissfully unaware), the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability at performing that task. But what’s truly fascinating is why it happens. You see, the true beauty of the Dunning-Kruger Effect lies in its irony. The skills needed to perform well are the same ones needed to recognize good performance.
It’s basically a blind spot in the prefrontal cortex. Bluntly put, it’s not just that they’re useless at something — their uselessness extends to their ability to self-evaluate. Not only are they bad at what they do, they also lack the ability to grasp how woefully inept they really are. And this leads them to become overconfident in their own abilities.
It’s like watching someone open a box from IKEA, set the instructions on fire and confidently grab the Allen key. You want to intervene, but your innate curiosity means you also want to see how long it will take them to notice that the coffee table they’re supposed to be building starts to resemble a tiny garden shed instead.
Interestingly, their research suggests the opposite is also true: high performers often underestimate their abilities and are riddled with self-doubt. I find this profoundly satisfying. It’s almost as if the universe wants to balance out swagger with modesty, and cluelessness with proficiency.
Mic Confidence, Minus Competence
For a textbook case study in the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you need look no further than your local tavern on karaoke night. Because oddly enough, the people most eager to grab the mic are often the ones least qualified to do so. They belt out “Livin’ on a Prayer” with a perfect blend of unbridled abandon and boundless ineptitude, like they’re auditioning for Canada’s Got Not-So-Much Talent. Meanwhile, those in the audience who can carry a tune stay firmly bolted to their chairs, refusing to even quietly sing along. There’s polite clapping as they wrap up — a tribute to their sheer audacity. But they take it as confirmation of their greatness, bowing and blowing kisses to the crowd.
Then you notice they aren’t going back to their table.
And before long, those all-too-familiar opening piano chords begin to play.
They’re staying on stage for their command performance.
Don’t Stop Believin’.
Oh, dear God, no.
I remember a time when alcohol was the only thing we blamed for publicly laying waste to our dignity and decorum.
Sadly, this is no longer the case.
But the effect isn’t confined just to karaoke and cubicles. Studies have shown that medical students who perform poorly often overestimate their test results by two full letter grades.
Think about that the next time you’re huffing anesthesia and the last thing you hear is your surgeon saying “Don’t worry bud…if you’ve seen one pancreas you’ve seen ‘em all.”
Or how about the novice pilots who rate themselves as “very confident” that are more likely to ignore safety protocols?
Or police officers with the weakest firearms skills who rate themselves as “highly skilled”.
Or the substitute teacher who insists they don’t need a lesson plan because they “connect with the youth”.
It’s like believing you’re qualified to judge a cooking contest when you think “al dente” is that Italian guy you saw making spaghetti in that one TikTok video.
So the Dunning-Kruger Effect isn’t just about being tone-deaf and rhythmically bereft. It’s about arrogance that bursts forth from the seeds of ignorance, as well as the humility that comes from experience. And it’s alive and well in office meetings, hospital rounds, and every situation where someone says, “How hard can it be?”
Objects in Mirror Are Dumber Than They Appear
Let’s be honest: the Dunning-Kruger Effect isn’t just something that happens to “other people.” It’s not some rare psychological disorder with an ultra-narrow demographic populated entirely by karaoke enthusiasts. It’s a cognitive pothole in the road of clear thought that you hit at full speed. And when you come to, you have no idea what happened except that your suspension has been snapped in twain and your ego has been thrown clear from your body.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time telling you what the Dunning-Kruger Effect is, but it’s also important to remember what it’s not. Not every mistake is a Dunning-Kruger moment. Sometimes you screw up, feel the sting, and course correct. That’s just being human.
Like the time I thought I could debug a production issue in five minutes. With half an hour left in the workday, I figured I had plenty of time to patch the problem and implement the fix. Six hours, four coffees, and one self-inflicted bald spot later, I emerged victorious having finally located the problem — a period where there shouldn’t have been one. Then there’s all the times I deleted a live database thinking I was in our test environment. Oops. Again.
One of my colleagues once had a lengthy streak of screwups over the course of a few days, so much so that we would jokingly enter RFUT beside his name on the small whiteboard in our area of the office that we used as a weekly calendar. And, in a testament to his ability to laugh at himself, he'd sometimes mark that on the whiteboard himself and wait for us to see it and ask him what had happened. RFUT, by the way, stood for “Raoul² Messed Up Today.”
² Not his real name.
So, yeah, we knew when we’d messed up. We owned it. We fixed it. Hopefully, we learned from it. As baseball pitcher Vern Law once said: “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.”
But genuine, bona fide Dunning-Kruger moments are different. They’re not just about being wrong — they’re about blissfully sipping a cocktail of equal parts ignorance and arrogance. You’re so confident in your brilliance that you don’t even notice the trail of chaos in your wake. No apologies. No reflection. Just a double-down.
I think we all start out on top of Mount Stupid. It’s the first stop on the learning curve. You get a taste of a new skill and feel a rush of self-assurance. But maybe confidence and wisdom are inversely proportional. From here, there are two paths:
A. For the Dunning-Kruger afflicted, confidence surges — undeservedly — while wisdom, by any objective measure, tanks. And because neither illuminates their brain’s "check engine" light, they settle into a feedback loop that keeps confirming their brilliance.
2. For everyone else, learning brings humility. The more they know, the more they recognize their limitations. Even familiar challenges are met with an unassuming respect for their complexities. They know experience doesn’t guarantee success, and they gain a healthy regard for how much they don’t know.
About 2,400 years ago, a guy named Socrates said it best: “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” Once that sinks in, you descend Mount Stupid and enter the Valley of Humility along with everyone else who’s ever been brought down a peg or three by their own hubris.
When Your Team Member Lives on Mount Stupid
So the real question you end up asking yourself is: What do I do when I experience this in my workplace?
I’m glad you asked. As luck would have it, I’ve come up with a few Dunning-Kruger Mitigation Strategies you may elect to use in an effort to make your life a little better.
Or at least more entertaining.
Strategy #1 – Play along with their delusions of grandeur
What this will do:It allows you to actively foster their self-deception while maintaining plausible deniability. Win-win.
The good:Requires minimal effort. When they talk about their plan to “improve team morale with extra tartar sauce on Fishstick Friday in the cafeteria,” just smile, nod approvingly and flash them the double thumbs-up.
The bad:Your tacit approval coupled with not stepping in to discourage them may give others the impression that you support their hare-brained idea.
The ugly:And what happens if they succeed? Against all odds, their nonsense gains traction. Now you’re anchored to an idea you think is stupid, and you’re delivering a keynote about it at next week's annual meeting.
Strategy #2 – Create a decoy project
What this will do:Diverts their attention to a “sandbox” initiative: no real stakes, no real outcomes, no real project management and no real danger. Allows you and the rest of the team to function.
The good:You get peace and quiet. While they’re busy doing whatever meaningless task you've set them on, actual work can proceed uninterrupted.
The bad:You’ll need to fabricate a project that’s just plausible enough to keep them engaged, but meaningless enough to avoid consequences.
The ugly:They do an end-run and present their decoy project directly to upper management. It’s greenlit. You’re now the executive sponsor of a pilot program that will use colour-coded email headers to improve workflows.
Strategy #3 – Give them enough rope to hang themselves
What this will do:It will help you better identify the length to which their delusions allow them to travel, making it easier for you to establish boundaries and limit the damage they can do to your team’s work and morale.
The good:Assigning them real work light years beyond their competence while they boast about how easy it will be — then sitting back comfortably to watch as it all slowly, inexorably and inevitably falls apart around them. I mean, does it really get any better than this?
The bad:Guilt. Watching them continuously and obliviously produce substandard work can get a little uncomfortable.
The ugly:You may be commissioned to enter the picture to clean up their mess. Their Chernobyl may wind up being your nuclear waste remediation plan.
Strategy #4 – Feed the beast
What this will do:Rapid inflation of their ego to cartoonish proportions.
The good:So easy to accomplish. Pumping the tires of a Dunning-Kruger victim is the emotional equivalent of extinguishing a tire fire with diesel fuel. You hope it accelerates an implosion, followed by their first real moment of clarity — a humbling “I’m in over my head” awakening and pivot toward self-correction.
The bad:Except it won’t. People afflicted by Dunning-Kruger aren’t just unaware that their work stinks — they have zero interest in taking responsibility for it. When things inevitably crater, it will always be someone else’s fault.
The ugly:The project fails spectacularly. They blame you. And now you’re chairing the post-mortem committee tasked with “extracting learnings” from a flaming wreck you never believed in.
Strategy #5 – Swift and blinding violence
What this will do:Physically removes them from the workplace dynamic, at least temporarily.
The good:Guaranteed to work. Delivering a well-timed shoe to the side of the head may also go a long way toward bettering your mental health.
The bad:Losing a colleague, even for a short period of time while they convalesce in traction, could mean more work for you.
The ugly:Any time workplace conflict escalates to grievous bodily harm, those jerks from HR are likely to get involved. Plus you’ll be financially on the hook for fixing that hole in the drywall that your colleague’s head briefly occupied.
Concluding Note
The strategies outlined above are presented as part of the Workplace Cognitive Risk Mitigation Series, Volume III: Navigating the Dunning-Kruger Continuum. While no single approach guarantees success, the judicious application of one or more of these techniques may improve morale, reduce collateral damage, and provide the illusion of control in otherwise hopeless circumstances. For best results, consult with a licensed professional, a trusted colleague, or the bottom of a bottle of your favourite spirits.
The Takeaway — If There Even Is One (And I’m Pretty Sure There Isn’t)
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is actually kind of funny to observe — until it’s not. Because behind the comedy, there’s always the potential for problems. Unchecked confidence, especially when it is undeserved, can derail projects, damage team morale, and give delusional underperformers cause to seek positions of greater responsibility and power.
And as distressing as these outcomes are, Sarah McLachlan isn’t singing on a commercial or a telethon devoted to helping these deluded halfwits screw their heads on straight.
That’s why self-awareness matters — the kind that makes you pause before speaking, ask questions before assuming, and listen before leading. Self-awareness isn’t innate, rather a skill that’s honed through years of experience.
It’s also why humility isn’t just a virtue. In a world full of the confidently terrible, the ability to say “I don’t know” seems to be groundbreaking. It opens the door to learning, collaboration, and genuine progress.
The goal has never been to be the smartest person in the room. It’s to be the one who helps everyone else in the room get smarter.
Even, and especially, if that means gently wresting the mic from their grip before they launch into their passionate and deeply jarring rendition of “Proud Mary”.
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