A rchive Date
[ 10-05-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[Stupid is as stupid does
By JOHN OAKLEY
Toronto Sun
January 22, 2000
It's the kind of periodical most guys would only ever pick up at the magazine stand to pad a dubious purchase.
But as I was thumbing through the December issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the other day, I happened upon a fascinating article that comes as close as any scientific explanation I've read so far for the ages-old conundrum: why does bullshit baffle brains?
The phenomenon truly is one of those great mysteries of life, right up there with "Where do elephant's go when they die?" and "Who killed Sal Mineo?"
Hallelujah! At long last science has provided the answer. A professor of psychology at Cornell University, one David A. Dunning, has concluded after extensive research that the least competent people in life have the most confidence in their abilities. That would explain those scrawny little guys who pick bar fights with Mike Tyson, or Bruce Willis persisting with his acting career. Actually, one is a death wish, the other Death Wish 1-14.
Now it all makes sense. That people who do things badly are supremely confident explains the myriad driving schools listed in the Toronto telephone book and why a golfer with a 42 handicap will tee up a $6 golf ball, cock-sure he'll carry 210 yards of swamp and fescue on his way to his first-ever eagle. We're talking serious delusion here.
But just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction (remember we're also talking science here), the good professor found the most able or together people were likely to grossly underestimate their own competence. Perhaps that's why the jury's still out on the authorship of some of the great works of literature in the canon of western civilization - Shakespeare was too embarrassed to sign off on it.
Conversely, B-movie director Ed Wood must've been convinced he had another Citizen Kane on his hands with Plan 9 From Outer Space. And yet the explanation for this phenomenon of distorting self-estimation is so fundamental it boggles the mind. Incompetent fools, Dr. Dunning found, are simply too thick to appreciate they are incompetent. Ignorance is bliss; i.e., they don't know what that means, but they're happy.
This is because the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. Didn't we intuitively sense this all along with Jethro Bodine - fledgling movie star? Or Oliver Wendell Douglas - gentleman farmer?
This deficiency in self-monitoring skills, says Dr. Dunning, explains how the humour-impaired insist on telling jokes even after family and colleagues have disowned them. Or why your chronically unemployed buddy with the bad teeth and home-made glass eye thinks he's God's gift to women while you, Mr. Magna Cum Laude with your two law degrees and a Congressional Medal of Honour, are too timid and insecure to get lucky. There is no justice.
But at least, finally, we have a sound, scientific understanding for why Barbara Walters and Bob Saget got to where they are and why we invariably get the politicians and governments we deserve.
It's the new Gutenberg Galaxy - the Steve Gutenberg galaxy where competent people are too sharp for their own good, falling prey instead to the psych-out job of those incompetent legions who carry no such baggage.
Instead, against all forensic evidence to the contrary, they've got you and me on our heels believing they actually have more of their act together than we do.
Who needs the reality check here?
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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