So you have to be able to influence people. If you want to be effective, you have to suck it up and bring people along with you—even though it seems like a waste of time.
First, slow down even though it goes against every grain of your being. Then brace yourself, and try some of the following. Go through the step of setting context and getting input. Develop the attitude that you can learn something from anyone. Practice being more curious. You will get some good ideas that surprise you. People like to be asked. You may feel like you are wasting time, but you will win favor by listening.
Even if you think their ideas are stupid, listening will pay off later when you need to get their support. You are not trying to be mean. You are trying to be straightforward, practical, share the answer, and make progress. In fact, one of the things that is so frustrating about these people is that they accuse you of being mean when you are not.
But they have the right to their perception. What they see may be your dismissing their inputs, ignoring them, or picking fights publicly. Be more gracious. Be more patient. This finding was not a quirk of trying to measure subjective sense of humour. The researchers repeated the experiment, only this time with tests of logical reasoning and grammar.
These disciplines have defined answers, and in each case they found the same pattern: those people who performed the worst were also the worst in estimating their own aptitude. In all three studies, those whose performance put them in the lowest quarter massively overestimated their own abilities by rating themselves as above average.
In a later study, the most incompetent participants still failed to realise they were bottom of the pack even when given feedback on the performance of others. Kruger and Dunning's interpretation is that accurately assessing skill level relies on some of the same core abilities as actually performing that skill, so the least competent suffer a double deficit. Not only are they incompetent, but they lack the mental tools to judge their own incompetence.
In a key final test, Kruger and Dunning trained a group of poor performers in logical reasoning tasks. Other research has shown that this "unskilled and unaware of it" effect holds in real-life situations, not just in abstract laboratory tests. For example, hunters who know the least about firearms also have the most inaccurate view of their firearm knowledge, and doctors with the worst patient-interviewing skills are the least likely to recognise their inadequacies.
What has become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of what psychologists call metacognition — thinking about thinking.
The effect might just explain the apparently baffling self belief of some of your friends and colleagues. But before you start getting too smug, just remember one thing. If you find yourself constantly surrounded by stupid people and perpetually peeved, here are five possible reasons to consider, along with some self-help tips to jump start your own personal transformation out of it. Do annoying people seem to circle you like vultures, picking away at your very last nerve?
Making you so angry that you want to punch something—especially them? It was not a pretty picture. During that time, my path seemed littered with stupid and selfish people who were just plain mean and unfair to me.
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