The Dunning-Kruger Effect in Feedback

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”

That quote, often attributed to writer Charles Bukowski, touches on a cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. The bias presents itself when:

1. Those with the least experience or expertise tend to be the most overconfident
2. Those who know more and have far more expertise are modest and sometimes incredibly underconfident.

The effect is often visualized like this:

Further complicating matters is, as many studies show and as U.S. politics has certainly put on center stage, many of us (literally many millions of us) are tricked by loud and overconfident narcissists—even when they are far closer to the "Know nothing" side of the Competence spectrum than their more qualified and humble competitors.

The BBC summarizes the results of one study like this:

"Overall, they found that someone with a high degree of narcissism was around 29% faster in their career progression to the position of CEO, compared to the average candidate of similar qualifications. Sadly, for all the hardworking-but-humble workers out there, it seems that narcissists’ constant self-promotion really does pay off in the long-term."

As Dunning & Kruger wrote in their classic 1999 paper, not only do those who know the least seem to have the most confidence, they use that confidence to make bad decisions and:

“…their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.”

In other words, we can be so ignorant '.

Feedback and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Your mind may now be filled with examples of how this plays out in the workplace — from overconfident extroverts who make it to the top of the corporate ladder to humble experts whose important ideas can’t gain traction. As you can imagine, this bias can impact the feedback relationship in many ways, including:

1. Overconfident people who provide feedback on topics they know little about
2. Underconfident people who don’t provide feedback on topics they know much about

At the organizational level, a flavor of this bias may also play itself out, whereby overconfident leaders of a successful company may fail to read the market feedback signals — and thus have their business disrupted by a new entrant.

Improving as Feedback Givers and Receivers

Understanding this bias and recognizing and exploring how it impacts ourselves, not only others, can improve workplace feedback communication.

As we covered in the constructive feedback course, it’s important not to “talk just to talk” when others ask for feedback. In my experience, this happens for various reasons, including anxiety of the feedback giver, the feedback giver's want to be helpful, and, yes, a Dunning-Kruger phenomenon whereby the feedback giver, rather than express their limitations, steps into their overconfidence and speaks from there.

This bias can also impact feedback-seeking behavior because if you already think you are an expert in some area, you likely won’t approach others for feedback.

The bias can also play out for underconfident feedback receivers who, despite being strong in one area, may be filled with so much self-doubt that they adopt unhelpful feedback.

Before entering into a planned feedback meeting on a particular topic (and during your feedback processing phase), it can be helpful to take a few moments to think about where you might be on the Dunning-Kruger diagram. Pausing in this way can bring awareness to where you might be over or under-confident, which can greatly impact how you give and receive feedback.