8 ms·

Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect

35 points by dvcoolarun 3y ago

darkerside 3y ago
Impostor syndrome for me, Dunning Kruger for thee
TrackerFF 3y ago
Dunning-Kruger effect has become the most abused and overused piece of pop psych in the history. God I wish we could just erased it from the collective vocabulary.
- castlecrasher2 3y ago
  Agreed, though I think it's reasonable to say the overuse is somewhat nice as it allows you to quickly identify who suffers from it and ignore them.
  - smugglerFlynn 3y ago
    It seems your ability to practically apply the knowledge about Dunning-Kruger effect is suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect.
    - castlecrasher2 3y ago
      I suspect I'm spot on, and you're taking personal offence for that reason.
- duxup 3y ago
  All popular phrases go through that phase where it is recklessly used to the point that you don't know what anyone means by it. At some point it ends up being (for some people) a pejorative that you can read simply as "I don't like it". Dunning-Kruger certainly has reached that point, you have to really dig to figure out if they're just throwing the phrase around or they're applying it in a thoughtful manner. All sorts of phrases end up that way. "virtue signaling", a phrase I've never been a fan of has ended up that way too.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Indeed; to me, it seems that pejorative use of the phrase "virtue signalling" is itself an act of virtue signalling. And now the meta-question: did I just…
    - duxup 3y ago
      Yeah there's some thick irony of the sorta public call out aspect of declaring that someone is virtue signalling. To me "virtue signalling" even in it's more strict definition is often so close to just "communication" that I just don't see see the usefulness of the phrase. I get the idea that it usually implies that the person doing so is being insincere but I honestly think the better way to do that is just say they're being insincere and demonstrate why. Without showing why they're insincere it seems like it is just an empty phrase.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  Honestly. Has the original paper even been replicated?
- vehemenz 3y ago
  Imposter Syndrome isn't much better. In my experience, most "sufferers" are more likely to be in over their heads than intellectually humble. You need to be somewhat of an expert to understand your relative level in the first place. I'm not saying people don't belong, but that the feeling of insecurity, especially among young people, is more often than not justified.
- coremoff 3y ago
  Regardless of whether or not it's actually true, I think there are enough people who believe it to be true that it will stick around; and people believe it to be true because they think they see examples in real life - that's why I believe it to be a useful concept and believe it is a real thing. Obviously I could be as blind, or just wrong, as anyone.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- CipherThrowaway 3y ago
  +1 and was looking for this comment. Pop-psych Dunning-Kruger concept is based on scant research, and the original paper doesn't even make the claim that people think it does. IMV DKE pop-psych is popular because it enables a kind of second-order superiority complex where you can say shit like, "Research shows that everyone who thinks they're smart is actually a huge dumbass. Actually the really smart ones are the anxiety ridden imposter syndrome devs like myself!" At least overconfidence and naked condescension required some courage. The insufferable new meta-game of superiority signalling seems to be feigned humility and hiding ego behind the affectation of "knowing how little you know."
- mistermann 3y ago
  Also Occam's Razor...I suspect the collective damage these two popular memes alone cause would be shocking if there was a way to see such things.
- duckman1 3y ago
  [dead]
- TSUTiger 3y ago
  Ah, I see what you did there!
KwisatzHaderack 3y ago
The advice “don’t be too hard on yourself” only works on Imposter Syndrome. I don’t think this works on “Dunning-Kruger” though.
efitz 3y ago
I think that impostor syndrome is inextricably linked with Dunning-Kruger. I believe that impostor syndrome is a lack of overconfidence in one's abilities- that implies that you have the ability to assess competence and to assess the skills needed for a job or task, and you don't default to "I know I can do it well". When you encounter a novel job or task, you don't immediately assume competence, and you will remain uncertain until you fully understand the requirements of the job or task. A lot of impostor syndrome comes from "don't fully understand what's required, but it looked complicated from the outside", and will go away with greater understanding provided you actually have the skills and the competence to self-assess. If you lacked the ability to assess competence in yourself, then you likely would not have impostor syndrome. I don't see why it's a balance. Impostor syndrome typically lessens over time as you become familiar with the job/task and the requirements necessary to perform well, and are better able to assess your own skills against those requirements. If impostor syndrome doesn't go away with time, maybe you are correctly assessing that you don't (yet) have the requisite skills. If you never get impostor syndrome, then you either aren't challenging yourself or you might not have the subject area competence to assess your own skills level vs. the jobs/tasks you take on, e.g. Dunning-Kruger effect.
- BehindBlueEyes 3y ago
  If imposter syndrome doesn’t go away with time, it is very possible the person overly focuses on knowledge/skills that are lacking but that are not required at all to perform at their job, and this can happen even when the person already is a/the top performer.
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    I've spent a large part of my career managing IT teams. I've worked with a lot of noobs. The issue I find more often is not that they don't know the info, they simply don't have the confidence in what they know and no real practice applying it. It's one thing to know that DNS travels over port 53, but leveraging that in troubleshooting is harder, since it may involve a firewall, switches, trunked ports, servers, workstations, etc. It just takes time to learn the practical side and that's rarely taught in schools from what I've seen. YMMV.
dclowd9901 3y ago
> For me, the first step towards that mindset was understanding that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence Works well for impostor syndrome folks. But I think what the people in the back (the DK folks), need to consider is that you can also do well without it reflecting on your overall competence. It's more about putting ego aside altogether. You're a mushy piece of meat that thinks. Feel good about your accomplishments, feel bad when you fuck up, learn and move on.
helpfulmandrill 3y ago
Just because you have imposter syndrome doesn't mean you#re competent ;)
- ben_w 3y ago
  Sometimes I worry I'm doing imposter syndrome wrong.
- duxup 3y ago
  It's so hard to really know. When I did a coding bootcamp long ago in a career switch I couldn't help but look around the room and think "Hey ... some of these people really shouldn't be arbitrarily encouraged anymore." It's a rough thing to think / do, but also maybe would have been for the best for many of them. To their credit I talked to some folks who were in the camp a few years after me and they reported that the class sizes naturally shrank as the classes went on. Apparently students were being better evaluated and had ways "out" that encouraged a little more "yeah maybe this isn't for you" type of evaluation.
  - dustingetz 3y ago
    [flagged]
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Imposter syndrome imposter syndrome, a/k/a IS².
- hirvi74 3y ago
  That's me to a tee. I have been told I have imposter syndrome by many people. I get all the "You are better than you think you are" and "Trust me, I've seen worse than you." Regardless, I think I have a pretty accurate assessment of my abilities. I have been professionally programming for 7 years (10 years total) and have a degree in CS. That being said, I have no fucking idea what I am doing 99% of the time. I just follow guides and documents, and just glue libraries together like a cyber plumber. I probably couldn't even reverse a string by hand if my life depended on it. My job has a pretty low bar for what is considered acceptable, so I have been able to fly under the radar with ease all these years. I'm not being modest, I am being serious. The jaws of many users here would hit the floor if they saw some of our practices. However, the good news for me is that I do not have to remain like this. Over the past few months or so, I have really tried to increase my knowledge by diving face first in books, lectures, and other resources. I feel like I have improved significantly in this short amount of time. I mean, I am basically starting all over again, but hey, I can maintain the status quo or I can do something about it. I guess my whole point is that, one may be an "imposter" and/or incompetent, but it's also one's choice to remain as one.
fsckboy 3y ago
I feel like some perspective needs to be applied to these popular terms. Imposter syndrome: there's a "sadness is not depression" thing going on here. There is an actual Imposter Syndrome that afflicts people who are highly qualified/credentialed, people who have qualified for entrance into elite programs, and put in the time and effort to progress to graduation; and yet for psychological reasons, they have great self doubts about their "worth". This is akin to depression. (a third party would look at you and say "wow, you are super competent and qualified, it's terrible you feel you aren't," and no pep talk they give you is going to help you.) Then there are bouts of insecurity and guilt whereby any of us can feel like "I fibbed on my resume and interview to get this job, and I now I'm surrounded by people who know what they are doing, I hope nobody figures out I snuck in." This is akin to sadness. (a third party would look at you and say "ha ha serves you right, but it's always fake-it-till-you-make-it, everybody feels this way to start out, just grit your teeth, you'll be fine," and that pep talk will help you.) Everybody experiences sadness; sadness clears up and goes away. Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. Dunning Kruger? it's not really an Effect, it's an observation/tendency that is explained by simple logic along the lines of, "you don't know what you don't know".
- hirvi74 3y ago
  > Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. In many cases, depression does in fact go away on its own. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/
- jjeaff 3y ago
  The Dunning Kruger studies were observations, but I believe I have seen the term "Dunning Kruger Effect" used pretty often to describe the possibly/likely explanation to why Dunning Kruger observed what they did. Which is that once someone learns just a little bit about a complex topic, the effect is that they start to over estimate their competency in said topic. If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know, then you would expect to observe over confidence in people who know almost nothing about a topic. I believe D & K observed a sort of bell curve. (actual knowledge level on the x axis and confidence of knowledge on the y)
RobMurray 3y ago
Dunning-Kruger has been thoroughly debunked. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202012/dunning-kruger-isnt-real https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020... https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-kruger-effect/ https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-...
- 2024throwaway 3y ago
  > The majority of people can actually gauge their competence and knowledge accurately. I know plenty of C-suite folks who must be in the minority then.
  - psadri 3y ago
    It is a skill to genuinely or convincingly look past your own lack of competence.
  - westhanover 3y ago
    Have you considered that you might not be able to gauge peoples competence and knowledge accurately? Statistically, if you are observing so manly outliers that is likely to be the case. Hope this helps!
    - 2024throwaway 3y ago
      Ahhh this must be it. The CEO babbling about how AI "works" must be knowledgeable and competent, and I, an engineer actually working on our AI product, am the idiot. Thanks for the help!
  - duxup 3y ago
    I wonder if that's a case where folks in leadership feel like their job is to show confidence, provide direction, and they still maybe know they don't know enough (I mean who does...) and they still make the call (right or wrong). Perhaps more of a poor leadership thing we observe.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
kazinator 3y ago
What syndrome is: "I'm decent, though nothing special and have obvious limitations and weaknesses I acknowledge and work around; most others are incompetent."
- pavlov 3y ago
  Lack of empathy?
Aurornis 3y ago
> To find the sweet spot between impostor syndrome and overconfidence, you first need to understand that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence. > Failure is not something to be feared—it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. These pithy quotes can be good for shaking someone out of a perfectionism-induced freeze, but they take the concept too far. Failure is not a good outcome and should be reasonably avoided to the best of your abilities. You can and should learn from it, but removing all fear of failure isn't realistic. This doesn't mean you should never start anything that might fail. I think that's what these quotes are trying to get people to avoid. Instead, they set unrealistic expectations about how failure can't/shouldn't/won't have any consequences when, in fact, it often does. Likewise, making some mistakes is normal. Nobody is perfect. However, mistakes have consequences. It's how you handle and even prepare for those consequences that makes the difference. It's true that you shouldn't be so afraid of mistakes that you can't get yourself to take any risks or do anything, but you shouldn't go so far as to imagine mistakes as having no consequences. If someone is making mistakes at an unreasonably high rate, something needs to change: More training, more supervision, more education, or if all those fail, try a different role. These little feel-good quotes might shake some people out of being too afraid to try anything, but they also mislead a lot of people into unrealistic ideas about how failure and mistakes shouldn't have any consequences.
- StefanBatory 3y ago
  I wish I could upvote it many times. Failure is not normal and it is speaks badly of you no matter what's the reason. Most people including me are not perfect and it will happen but that doesn't mean failure is alright, that means that we're an problem. The only thing one has any right in their life to ever blame are themselves.
  - LegibleCrimson 3y ago
    A musician fails to perform a piece hundreds or thousands of times while learning it. A programmer fails to apply a concept many times until they fully understand it. To imply that failure is not normal and not alright is to imply that everybody should be able to perfectly do anything in their life without any prior practice. Clearly, the word "failure" in this context is insufficient, because we all would agree that some failures are unreasonable and some are an absolutely normal and necessary part of personal growth.
somenameforme 3y ago
Dunning-Kruger should go the way of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For those who may not know about the latter, it was also largely faked. Guards were coached in how to act, the famous 'Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside. I can't stand another night!' prisoner was a student who wanted to go study (which he was told he was allowed to, but wasn't) and so he faked a mental breakdown, and so on. Back to Dunning Kruger, it's largely a statistical trick. Wiki actually has a pretty decent section on this [1], alongside some nice examples. The gist of the trick is that the more random a sample is (in other words the more people are unable to accurately self evaluate) the stronger a Dunning-Kruger effect you'd show. The way Dunning-Kruger achieved the really beautiful perfectly linear graph people always reference is by having people self evaluate their ability to... determine a funny joke. And so broken was their test that they had to eliminate one of their 8 professional comedian judges, because he couldn't determine a funny joke, by the standards of their test. And the remaining 7's scores were judged, by the paper itself, as "moderately reliable." And I suspect this was intentional. The first thing they would have done is to plot a scatter graph of their results. And they would certainly have quickly realized the transform (by bucketing) and the scatter plot tell radically different stories (again the illustrations on Wiki make this more than clear), but only one of them is true! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#Statistical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#...
- nyrikki 3y ago
  For colloquial use just replace it with overconfidence which is how this post, and most people use it. It is a real thing for humans. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/overconfidence https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/overconfiden...
cfr2023 3y ago
I heard David Letterman say within the past decade that on the days he did not feel the show was very good, he couldn't bring himself to even leave the building until it was dark outside, out of shame. Meanwhile, at home, I would practically be shaking with excitement waiting for the show to start, I so appreciated it. This tale somewhat suggests that people who perceive themselves as incompetent and inauthentic might spend more of their time striving at work, which could raise the bar, maintain a high standard and eventually breed something resembling confidence. Or it could just continuously undermine their natural confidence and sense of self-worth and debase them such that they are easy to overwork and manipulate. It can also just feed into fears that invalidate the satisfaction of any jobs well done, leading to burn out and feelings of futility. People who are overly confident can behave brashly and do damage, while automatically imposing costs on others, in the form of the time it takes to crack through their false beliefs or the duplication of effort it takes to walk back their mistakes. So, this is kind of a nothing post, basically a lament. It's not clear whether suffers of Impostor Syndrome or Dunning-Kruger type symptoms have an easier path to a more moderate position, but each one seems likely to be rampant in just about any workplace.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
One is over-estimating what you know and are capable of. The other is, under-estimating. The former is a problem because it often comes from a lack of self-awareness (and peers willing to speak up when you faulter). The latter can be a problem because it prevents you from fully offering what you have to offer. Of course there's a sweet spot, but if you had to favor one or the other, lean towards Imposter. When you're in DK-mode you're far more likely to make "bad yeses" and those can be painful.
mike_hearn 3y ago
The Dunning-Kruger effect is something you have to be very careful with. It's come out of social science, so, you have to keep up a high level of skepticism. The first problem is the "effect" can be discovered in purely random data, because it's basically just a statistical artefact. There's a description of what went wrong here [1] and a paper from 2017 here [2] ("Our data show that peoples' self-assessments of competence, in general, reflect a genuine competence that they can demonstrate. That finding contradicts the current consensus about the nature of self-assessment"). In other words it doesn't replicate when the data is handled correctly. By itself that problem means DK should not really be cited for anything. But even if you ignore that: • The original study does the usual pop psychology thing of extrapolating from a tiny self-selecting sample of American college students to all of humanity. • It has a stupid design in which the students are asked to rate how funny jokes are, with some local comedians being the "experts", and this is presented as a measure of social skills i.e. simple disagreement on what's funny is sufficient to get you dinged as incompetent-but-doesn't-know-it in DK's research. • It also has a problem with circular logic where they found that one of their hand-picked joke experts disagreed with the others on what's funny, meaning that comedian would have been considered one of those idiots who thinks they're an expert, but they were picked by Dunning & Kruger specifically because they were an expert. This shows that the nature of many tasks is subjective and certainly the one they'd chosen is subjective, but instead of fixing their definition of expertise they just tossed the guy out of the expert pool. (the study does have two other tasks, but there's not enough detail in the descriptions to know if they had similar problems) Dunning wrote an attempted rebuttal in 2022 [3], but it is unable to directly attack the statistical claims and instead argues that because there have been replications, the effect is real. But this doesn't make sense because if you replicate an invalid methodology you'll get the same results; this doesn't make them correct. He also argues for it by presenting examples of "skills" that are simply brain teasers/well known gotchas, rather than actual skills one might practice. [1] https://fortune.com/2023/05/08/what-is-dunning-kruger-effect-smart-intelligence-competence-john-cleese/ https://fortune.com/2023/05/08/what-is-dunning-kruger-effect... [2] https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol10/iss1/art4/ https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol10/iss1/art4/ [3] https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dunning-kruger-effect-and-its-discontents https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dunning-kruger-effect-an...
pierat 3y ago
Shitty pop-psychology is shitty pop-psychology. A more realistic "impostor syndrome" is the IT idea of 'fake it till you make it'. In other words, its a tacit admission you dont know shit and you're googling for ideas until you get something that sticks. And yeah, most IT is like this. Even Stack Overflow is a meme - search here and copy/paste regardless the quality. And, well, it's not impostor syndrome if you're a know-nothing idiot. And the crap about Dunning-Kruger.. It just serves a way to shut experts up and dismiss their experiences and knowledge. Its basically the pseudo-science crap way of saying "My quiet ignorance is better than your direct assurances". Then again, business types also believe in shit like forcing all employees in Myers–Briggs Type Indicator crap, and then comparing that across everyone. And if you know anything about psychology, you don't do longitudinal comparisons of this sort of crap.
JaggerFoo 3y ago
Chicks dig the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
throwD7136BA974 3y ago
This is a personal anecdote about this topic so feel free to ignore, but I recently had one of those epiphanies that you only see in movies that is somewhat relevant here. Background: I'm a software developer that has worked for 30 years professionally and has used computers for at least 40. Languages and technologies range across pretty much everything popular (and many that were not). I've always considered myself intelligent to very intelligent. I own lots of books, love learning, etc. So much so that I considered it a deep part of my self-image. Except while attending a very good engineering school, I generally considered myself the smartest person in the room (yes, insufferable, really). Now, internally (stored in one of those places in your mind that you know are there but you just pretend isn't), I knew this wasn't the case. I have a terrible memory and have always seemed to have to work at least twice as hard in math and sciences and still only had a vague understanding of what was going on. Even to this day I can tell you a lot of findings about the fundamentals of computer science theory but I couldn't explain them to you except in broad sketches. And if you asked me specifics about a book I just read I would likely draw a blank. That said, I've had very successful career as a developer. Recently, I began playing Go more seriously after playing casually for years with another (much higher ranked) player. I've joined a local group, play online regularly, study books, etc. While I previously thought I was a pretty good amateur I was quickly disabused of this notion. I was beaten handily by almost everyone I played. Worse, studying made almost no difference. This caused me a bit of a intellectual breakdown. It was as if what I always knew deep down was actually true: that I'm NOT particularly smart or gifted. That I'm at very best "average" if not below. Go shined a big, bright floodlight on all of those insecurities that I hide from myself. My entire self-image was shattered. I'm still picking up the pieces of this realization but over the past few months it has radically changed how I deal with other people as well as how I perceive myself. I think I'm a little more understanding, a lot more humble, and maybe a bit more "human". I'm still a successful software developer, but now when I'm studying something new I'm not doing it out of some misguided belief that learning it will somehow make me better than other people, but because it will make me a better software developer that can help solve problems better. I don't treat knowledge as something that I can lord over people to show that I'm smarter than them. And I seem to assume better of people than I did before. And I still play Go, poorly.
- 3y ago
static_void_ 3y ago
You can't have imposter syndrome with out the conscious or unconscious idea that you've "fooled" all the rubes around you into thinking you're good at something. Even in doubt you're still doing some mental gymnastics that allow you to place yourself above your peers. It's inherently self centered and arrogant way of thinking about yourself. The opposite of self aware.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment or Imposter Syndrome, but isn't someone with Imposter Syndrome placing themselves below their peers their actual abilities?
mugiseyebrows 3y ago
Dunning-Kruger Effect may or may not exist, study that "found" it used motodological tricks to get desired results.

35 points by dvcoolarun 3y ago

Impostor syndrome for me, Dunning Kruger for thee

Dunning-Kruger effect has become the most abused and overused piece of pop psych in the history. God I wish we could just erased it from the collective vocabulary.

castlecrasher2 3y ago
Agreed, though I think it's reasonable to say the overuse is somewhat nice as it allows you to quickly identify who suffers from it and ignore them.
- smugglerFlynn 3y ago
  It seems your ability to practically apply the knowledge about Dunning-Kruger effect is suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect.
  - castlecrasher2 3y ago
    I suspect I'm spot on, and you're taking personal offence for that reason.
duxup 3y ago
All popular phrases go through that phase where it is recklessly used to the point that you don't know what anyone means by it. At some point it ends up being (for some people) a pejorative that you can read simply as "I don't like it". Dunning-Kruger certainly has reached that point, you have to really dig to figure out if they're just throwing the phrase around or they're applying it in a thoughtful manner. All sorts of phrases end up that way. "virtue signaling", a phrase I've never been a fan of has ended up that way too.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Indeed; to me, it seems that pejorative use of the phrase "virtue signalling" is itself an act of virtue signalling. And now the meta-question: did I just…
  - duxup 3y ago
    Yeah there's some thick irony of the sorta public call out aspect of declaring that someone is virtue signalling. To me "virtue signalling" even in it's more strict definition is often so close to just "communication" that I just don't see see the usefulness of the phrase. I get the idea that it usually implies that the person doing so is being insincere but I honestly think the better way to do that is just say they're being insincere and demonstrate why. Without showing why they're insincere it seems like it is just an empty phrase.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
Honestly. Has the original paper even been replicated?
vehemenz 3y ago
Imposter Syndrome isn't much better. In my experience, most "sufferers" are more likely to be in over their heads than intellectually humble. You need to be somewhat of an expert to understand your relative level in the first place. I'm not saying people don't belong, but that the feeling of insecurity, especially among young people, is more often than not justified.
coremoff 3y ago
Regardless of whether or not it's actually true, I think there are enough people who believe it to be true that it will stick around; and people believe it to be true because they think they see examples in real life - that's why I believe it to be a useful concept and believe it is a real thing. Obviously I could be as blind, or just wrong, as anyone.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
CipherThrowaway 3y ago
+1 and was looking for this comment. Pop-psych Dunning-Kruger concept is based on scant research, and the original paper doesn't even make the claim that people think it does. IMV DKE pop-psych is popular because it enables a kind of second-order superiority complex where you can say shit like, "Research shows that everyone who thinks they're smart is actually a huge dumbass. Actually the really smart ones are the anxiety ridden imposter syndrome devs like myself!" At least overconfidence and naked condescension required some courage. The insufferable new meta-game of superiority signalling seems to be feigned humility and hiding ego behind the affectation of "knowing how little you know."
mistermann 3y ago
Also Occam's Razor...I suspect the collective damage these two popular memes alone cause would be shocking if there was a way to see such things.
duckman1 3y ago
[dead]
TSUTiger 3y ago
Ah, I see what you did there!

KwisatzHaderack 3y ago

The advice “don’t be too hard on yourself” only works on Imposter Syndrome. I don’t think this works on “Dunning-Kruger” though.

efitz 3y ago

I think that impostor syndrome is inextricably linked with Dunning-Kruger. I believe that impostor syndrome is a lack of overconfidence in one's abilities- that implies that you have the ability to assess competence and to assess the skills needed for a job or task, and you don't default to "I know I can do it well". When you encounter a novel job or task, you don't immediately assume competence, and you will remain uncertain until you fully understand the requirements of the job or task. A lot of impostor syndrome comes from "don't fully understand what's required, but it looked complicated from the outside", and will go away with greater understanding provided you actually have the skills and the competence to self-assess. If you lacked the ability to assess competence in yourself, then you likely would not have impostor syndrome. I don't see why it's a balance. Impostor syndrome typically lessens over time as you become familiar with the job/task and the requirements necessary to perform well, and are better able to assess your own skills against those requirements. If impostor syndrome doesn't go away with time, maybe you are correctly assessing that you don't (yet) have the requisite skills. If you never get impostor syndrome, then you either aren't challenging yourself or you might not have the subject area competence to assess your own skills level vs. the jobs/tasks you take on, e.g. Dunning-Kruger effect.

BehindBlueEyes 3y ago
If imposter syndrome doesn’t go away with time, it is very possible the person overly focuses on knowledge/skills that are lacking but that are not required at all to perform at their job, and this can happen even when the person already is a/the top performer.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  I've spent a large part of my career managing IT teams. I've worked with a lot of noobs. The issue I find more often is not that they don't know the info, they simply don't have the confidence in what they know and no real practice applying it. It's one thing to know that DNS travels over port 53, but leveraging that in troubleshooting is harder, since it may involve a firewall, switches, trunked ports, servers, workstations, etc. It just takes time to learn the practical side and that's rarely taught in schools from what I've seen. YMMV.

dclowd9901 3y ago

> For me, the first step towards that mindset was understanding that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence Works well for impostor syndrome folks. But I think what the people in the back (the DK folks), need to consider is that you can also do well without it reflecting on your overall competence. It's more about putting ego aside altogether. You're a mushy piece of meat that thinks. Feel good about your accomplishments, feel bad when you fuck up, learn and move on.

helpfulmandrill 3y ago

Just because you have imposter syndrome doesn't mean you#re competent ;)

ben_w 3y ago
Sometimes I worry I'm doing imposter syndrome wrong.
duxup 3y ago
It's so hard to really know. When I did a coding bootcamp long ago in a career switch I couldn't help but look around the room and think "Hey ... some of these people really shouldn't be arbitrarily encouraged anymore." It's a rough thing to think / do, but also maybe would have been for the best for many of them. To their credit I talked to some folks who were in the camp a few years after me and they reported that the class sizes naturally shrank as the classes went on. Apparently students were being better evaluated and had ways "out" that encouraged a little more "yeah maybe this isn't for you" type of evaluation.
- dustingetz 3y ago
  [flagged]
dredmorbius 3y ago
Imposter syndrome imposter syndrome, a/k/a IS².
hirvi74 3y ago
That's me to a tee. I have been told I have imposter syndrome by many people. I get all the "You are better than you think you are" and "Trust me, I've seen worse than you." Regardless, I think I have a pretty accurate assessment of my abilities. I have been professionally programming for 7 years (10 years total) and have a degree in CS. That being said, I have no fucking idea what I am doing 99% of the time. I just follow guides and documents, and just glue libraries together like a cyber plumber. I probably couldn't even reverse a string by hand if my life depended on it. My job has a pretty low bar for what is considered acceptable, so I have been able to fly under the radar with ease all these years. I'm not being modest, I am being serious. The jaws of many users here would hit the floor if they saw some of our practices. However, the good news for me is that I do not have to remain like this. Over the past few months or so, I have really tried to increase my knowledge by diving face first in books, lectures, and other resources. I feel like I have improved significantly in this short amount of time. I mean, I am basically starting all over again, but hey, I can maintain the status quo or I can do something about it. I guess my whole point is that, one may be an "imposter" and/or incompetent, but it's also one's choice to remain as one.

fsckboy 3y ago

I feel like some perspective needs to be applied to these popular terms. Imposter syndrome: there's a "sadness is not depression" thing going on here. There is an actual Imposter Syndrome that afflicts people who are highly qualified/credentialed, people who have qualified for entrance into elite programs, and put in the time and effort to progress to graduation; and yet for psychological reasons, they have great self doubts about their "worth". This is akin to depression. (a third party would look at you and say "wow, you are super competent and qualified, it's terrible you feel you aren't," and no pep talk they give you is going to help you.) Then there are bouts of insecurity and guilt whereby any of us can feel like "I fibbed on my resume and interview to get this job, and I now I'm surrounded by people who know what they are doing, I hope nobody figures out I snuck in." This is akin to sadness. (a third party would look at you and say "ha ha serves you right, but it's always fake-it-till-you-make-it, everybody feels this way to start out, just grit your teeth, you'll be fine," and that pep talk will help you.) Everybody experiences sadness; sadness clears up and goes away. Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. Dunning Kruger? it's not really an Effect, it's an observation/tendency that is explained by simple logic along the lines of, "you don't know what you don't know".

hirvi74 3y ago
> Not everybody suffers clinical depression, and it does not go away on its own. In many cases, depression does in fact go away on its own. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10364186/ [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22883473/
jjeaff 3y ago
The Dunning Kruger studies were observations, but I believe I have seen the term "Dunning Kruger Effect" used pretty often to describe the possibly/likely explanation to why Dunning Kruger observed what they did. Which is that once someone learns just a little bit about a complex topic, the effect is that they start to over estimate their competency in said topic. If it were simply the idea that you don't know what you don't know, then you would expect to observe over confidence in people who know almost nothing about a topic. I believe D & K observed a sort of bell curve. (actual knowledge level on the x axis and confidence of knowledge on the y)

RobMurray 3y ago

Dunning-Kruger has been thoroughly debunked. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202012/dunning-kruger-isnt-real https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020... https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-kruger-effect/ https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-...

2024throwaway 3y ago
> The majority of people can actually gauge their competence and knowledge accurately. I know plenty of C-suite folks who must be in the minority then.
- psadri 3y ago
  It is a skill to genuinely or convincingly look past your own lack of competence.
- westhanover 3y ago
  Have you considered that you might not be able to gauge peoples competence and knowledge accurately? Statistically, if you are observing so manly outliers that is likely to be the case. Hope this helps!
  - 2024throwaway 3y ago
    Ahhh this must be it. The CEO babbling about how AI "works" must be knowledgeable and competent, and I, an engineer actually working on our AI product, am the idiot. Thanks for the help!
- duxup 3y ago
  I wonder if that's a case where folks in leadership feel like their job is to show confidence, provide direction, and they still maybe know they don't know enough (I mean who does...) and they still make the call (right or wrong). Perhaps more of a poor leadership thing we observe.
- somenameforme 3y ago

kazinator 3y ago

What syndrome is: "I'm decent, though nothing special and have obvious limitations and weaknesses I acknowledge and work around; most others are incompetent."

pavlov 3y ago
Lack of empathy?

Aurornis 3y ago

> To find the sweet spot between impostor syndrome and overconfidence, you first need to understand that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence. > Failure is not something to be feared—it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. These pithy quotes can be good for shaking someone out of a perfectionism-induced freeze, but they take the concept too far. Failure is not a good outcome and should be reasonably avoided to the best of your abilities. You can and should learn from it, but removing all fear of failure isn't realistic. This doesn't mean you should never start anything that might fail. I think that's what these quotes are trying to get people to avoid. Instead, they set unrealistic expectations about how failure can't/shouldn't/won't have any consequences when, in fact, it often does. Likewise, making some mistakes is normal. Nobody is perfect. However, mistakes have consequences. It's how you handle and even prepare for those consequences that makes the difference. It's true that you shouldn't be so afraid of mistakes that you can't get yourself to take any risks or do anything, but you shouldn't go so far as to imagine mistakes as having no consequences. If someone is making mistakes at an unreasonably high rate, something needs to change: More training, more supervision, more education, or if all those fail, try a different role. These little feel-good quotes might shake some people out of being too afraid to try anything, but they also mislead a lot of people into unrealistic ideas about how failure and mistakes shouldn't have any consequences.

StefanBatory 3y ago
I wish I could upvote it many times. Failure is not normal and it is speaks badly of you no matter what's the reason. Most people including me are not perfect and it will happen but that doesn't mean failure is alright, that means that we're an problem. The only thing one has any right in their life to ever blame are themselves.
- LegibleCrimson 3y ago
  A musician fails to perform a piece hundreds or thousands of times while learning it. A programmer fails to apply a concept many times until they fully understand it. To imply that failure is not normal and not alright is to imply that everybody should be able to perfectly do anything in their life without any prior practice. Clearly, the word "failure" in this context is insufficient, because we all would agree that some failures are unreasonable and some are an absolutely normal and necessary part of personal growth.

somenameforme 3y ago

Dunning-Kruger should go the way of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For those who may not know about the latter, it was also largely faked. Guards were coached in how to act, the famous 'Jesus Christ, I'm burning up inside. I can't stand another night!' prisoner was a student who wanted to go study (which he was told he was allowed to, but wasn't) and so he faked a mental breakdown, and so on. Back to Dunning Kruger, it's largely a statistical trick. Wiki actually has a pretty decent section on this [1], alongside some nice examples. The gist of the trick is that the more random a sample is (in other words the more people are unable to accurately self evaluate) the stronger a Dunning-Kruger effect you'd show. The way Dunning-Kruger achieved the really beautiful perfectly linear graph people always reference is by having people self evaluate their ability to... determine a funny joke. And so broken was their test that they had to eliminate one of their 8 professional comedian judges, because he couldn't determine a funny joke, by the standards of their test. And the remaining 7's scores were judged, by the paper itself, as "moderately reliable." And I suspect this was intentional. The first thing they would have done is to plot a scatter graph of their results. And they would certainly have quickly realized the transform (by bucketing) and the scatter plot tell radically different stories (again the illustrations on Wiki make this more than clear), but only one of them is true! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#Statistical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#...

nyrikki 3y ago
For colloquial use just replace it with overconfidence which is how this post, and most people use it. It is a real thing for humans. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/overconfidence https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/overconfiden...

cfr2023 3y ago

I heard David Letterman say within the past decade that on the days he did not feel the show was very good, he couldn't bring himself to even leave the building until it was dark outside, out of shame. Meanwhile, at home, I would practically be shaking with excitement waiting for the show to start, I so appreciated it. This tale somewhat suggests that people who perceive themselves as incompetent and inauthentic might spend more of their time striving at work, which could raise the bar, maintain a high standard and eventually breed something resembling confidence. Or it could just continuously undermine their natural confidence and sense of self-worth and debase them such that they are easy to overwork and manipulate. It can also just feed into fears that invalidate the satisfaction of any jobs well done, leading to burn out and feelings of futility. People who are overly confident can behave brashly and do damage, while automatically imposing costs on others, in the form of the time it takes to crack through their false beliefs or the duplication of effort it takes to walk back their mistakes. So, this is kind of a nothing post, basically a lament. It's not clear whether suffers of Impostor Syndrome or Dunning-Kruger type symptoms have an easier path to a more moderate position, but each one seems likely to be rampant in just about any workplace.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

One is over-estimating what you know and are capable of. The other is, under-estimating. The former is a problem because it often comes from a lack of self-awareness (and peers willing to speak up when you faulter). The latter can be a problem because it prevents you from fully offering what you have to offer. Of course there's a sweet spot, but if you had to favor one or the other, lean towards Imposter. When you're in DK-mode you're far more likely to make "bad yeses" and those can be painful.

mike_hearn 3y ago

The Dunning-Kruger effect is something you have to be very careful with. It's come out of social science, so, you have to keep up a high level of skepticism. The first problem is the "effect" can be discovered in purely random data, because it's basically just a statistical artefact. There's a description of what went wrong here [1] and a paper from 2017 here [2] ("Our data show that peoples' self-assessments of competence, in general, reflect a genuine competence that they can demonstrate. That finding contradicts the current consensus about the nature of self-assessment"). In other words it doesn't replicate when the data is handled correctly. By itself that problem means DK should not really be cited for anything. But even if you ignore that: • The original study does the usual pop psychology thing of extrapolating from a tiny self-selecting sample of American college students to all of humanity. • It has a stupid design in which the students are asked to rate how funny jokes are, with some local comedians being the "experts", and this is presented as a measure of social skills i.e. simple disagreement on what's funny is sufficient to get you dinged as incompetent-but-doesn't-know-it in DK's research. • It also has a problem with circular logic where they found that one of their hand-picked joke experts disagreed with the others on what's funny, meaning that comedian would have been considered one of those idiots who thinks they're an expert, but they were picked by Dunning & Kruger specifically because they were an expert. This shows that the nature of many tasks is subjective and certainly the one they'd chosen is subjective, but instead of fixing their definition of expertise they just tossed the guy out of the expert pool. (the study does have two other tasks, but there's not enough detail in the descriptions to know if they had similar problems) Dunning wrote an attempted rebuttal in 2022 [3], but it is unable to directly attack the statistical claims and instead argues that because there have been replications, the effect is real. But this doesn't make sense because if you replicate an invalid methodology you'll get the same results; this doesn't make them correct. He also argues for it by presenting examples of "skills" that are simply brain teasers/well known gotchas, rather than actual skills one might practice. [1] https://fortune.com/2023/05/08/what-is-dunning-kruger-effect-smart-intelligence-competence-john-cleese/ https://fortune.com/2023/05/08/what-is-dunning-kruger-effect... [2] https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol10/iss1/art4/ https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol10/iss1/art4/ [3] https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dunning-kruger-effect-and-its-discontents https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dunning-kruger-effect-an...

pierat 3y ago

Shitty pop-psychology is shitty pop-psychology. A more realistic "impostor syndrome" is the IT idea of 'fake it till you make it'. In other words, its a tacit admission you dont know shit and you're googling for ideas until you get something that sticks. And yeah, most IT is like this. Even Stack Overflow is a meme - search here and copy/paste regardless the quality. And, well, it's not impostor syndrome if you're a know-nothing idiot. And the crap about Dunning-Kruger.. It just serves a way to shut experts up and dismiss their experiences and knowledge. Its basically the pseudo-science crap way of saying "My quiet ignorance is better than your direct assurances". Then again, business types also believe in shit like forcing all employees in Myers–Briggs Type Indicator crap, and then comparing that across everyone. And if you know anything about psychology, you don't do longitudinal comparisons of this sort of crap.

JaggerFoo 3y ago

Chicks dig the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

throwD7136BA974 3y ago

This is a personal anecdote about this topic so feel free to ignore, but I recently had one of those epiphanies that you only see in movies that is somewhat relevant here. Background: I'm a software developer that has worked for 30 years professionally and has used computers for at least 40. Languages and technologies range across pretty much everything popular (and many that were not). I've always considered myself intelligent to very intelligent. I own lots of books, love learning, etc. So much so that I considered it a deep part of my self-image. Except while attending a very good engineering school, I generally considered myself the smartest person in the room (yes, insufferable, really). Now, internally (stored in one of those places in your mind that you know are there but you just pretend isn't), I knew this wasn't the case. I have a terrible memory and have always seemed to have to work at least twice as hard in math and sciences and still only had a vague understanding of what was going on. Even to this day I can tell you a lot of findings about the fundamentals of computer science theory but I couldn't explain them to you except in broad sketches. And if you asked me specifics about a book I just read I would likely draw a blank. That said, I've had very successful career as a developer. Recently, I began playing Go more seriously after playing casually for years with another (much higher ranked) player. I've joined a local group, play online regularly, study books, etc. While I previously thought I was a pretty good amateur I was quickly disabused of this notion. I was beaten handily by almost everyone I played. Worse, studying made almost no difference. This caused me a bit of a intellectual breakdown. It was as if what I always knew deep down was actually true: that I'm NOT particularly smart or gifted. That I'm at very best "average" if not below. Go shined a big, bright floodlight on all of those insecurities that I hide from myself. My entire self-image was shattered. I'm still picking up the pieces of this realization but over the past few months it has radically changed how I deal with other people as well as how I perceive myself. I think I'm a little more understanding, a lot more humble, and maybe a bit more "human". I'm still a successful software developer, but now when I'm studying something new I'm not doing it out of some misguided belief that learning it will somehow make me better than other people, but because it will make me a better software developer that can help solve problems better. I don't treat knowledge as something that I can lord over people to show that I'm smarter than them. And I seem to assume better of people than I did before. And I still play Go, poorly.

3y ago

static_void_ 3y ago

You can't have imposter syndrome with out the conscious or unconscious idea that you've "fooled" all the rubes around you into thinking you're good at something. Even in doubt you're still doing some mental gymnastics that allow you to place yourself above your peers. It's inherently self centered and arrogant way of thinking about yourself. The opposite of self aware.

hirvi74 3y ago
Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment or Imposter Syndrome, but isn't someone with Imposter Syndrome placing themselves below their peers their actual abilities?

mugiseyebrows 3y ago

Dunning-Kruger Effect may or may not exist, study that "found" it used motodological tricks to get desired results.