Alice Wahome’s Dunning-Kruger effect on the bottom-up economics

This event so intrigued and inspired two psychology professors, David Dunning and Justin Kruger. To understand it better, in 1999, they conducted four studies at Cornell University called “Unskilled and unaware of it”. They administered tests of humor, grammar and logic to a group of participants. The study found that participants that scored in the bottom quartile grossly overestimated their test performance and ability.

For example, one of the tests was a 20-item grammar test. After the test, the participants estimated how their ability to identify grammatically correct standard English compared with others. In this test, the lowest scoring students grossly overestimated their abilities. Those who scored at the 10th percentile, that is they scored higher than only 10 per cent of others, rated their grammar abilities at the 67th percentile. In essence, their actual grammar ability was really poor, but they thought they were in the top third of the people.

This has since become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual domain are unable to recognize their own incompetence. They greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain, and feel confident that they actually are competent.

This has been a week of witnessing the Dunning-Kruger effect in the nation. The United Democratic Alliance (UDA) affiliated supporters have been at pains in their feeble attempts to describe what the bottom-up economic model means. But the one that has to take the prize is MP Alice Wahome. When asked on national television to describe this economic model, after a few mumbles, her response was ‘working from the bottom down’.

In all fairness, this could be explained away as a Freudian slip. However, upon examination on her subsequent explanations, it was clear that the MP was way out of her depth on this domain.

Undoubtedly, MP Alice Wahome is an adept politician, political pundit and lawyer. This you cannot take away from her. But unfortunately, her competence in these areas is what saw her display the Dunning-Kruger effect regarding unpacking the bottom-up economic model that is being championed by the UDA political party. The pressure to appear knowledgeable in defense of this economic model based on her other competencies, made her grossly over estimate her ability to describe this economic model. And the result on social media was a cross between a hurricane and a typhoon.

She became the butt of jokes, caricature and ridicule.

The Dunning-Kruger effect unfortunately is the Achilles heel of most of our politicians and political pundits. Particularly with the latter, they appear to have the inability to admit that nobody is a master of every facet of even a single thing. That even the simplest objects require complex webs of knowledge. And this is not because they are ignorant. It is because they suffer an illusion of knowledge.

Granted, we all have domains in which we are experts, in which we know a lot in exquisite detail. But on most subjects, we are only merely able to connect abstract bits of information, and what we know is little more than a feeling of understanding that we cannot really unpack.

Begs the question, why didn’t MP Alice Wahome realize the depth of her ignorance concerning economics or economic models? Why did she feel the pressure to pursue this illusion of knowledge?

I submit it is because like most politicians and political pundits, she is under the curse of the Hubris Syndrome. This is an acquired personality disorder where successful political leaders and pundits after a while of being in the limelight, begin exhibiting impetuosity, and a messianic zeal that conflates self with nation, only in this case, with her preferred political party.

Those with the Hubris Syndrome prize confidence so highly that many would rather pretend to be smart or skilled rather than risk looking inadequate and losing face. Their experiences at the top of their competences distort their reality and decision making.

In MP Wahome’s situation, it would have been more honorable for her to list her other competencies for the avoidance of doubt, but also in the same breadth, admit that economics is not her forte.

She could have invoked the economic principal of specialization of labor and competences within UDA. Specialization of labor is an important cause of proficient progress that produces efficiency and effectiveness where outputs increase because concentration is enhanced on those tasks which best suit one’s skills, interests and education. In this regard, she could have simply admitted that there are other more competent people with the expertise to expound on this economic model.

As humans, we would not be such competent thinkers if we had to rely only on the limited knowledge stored in our heads. The secret is that we live in a world in which knowledge is all around us. We live in a community of knowledge and have access to huge amounts of knowledge that sits in other people’s heads.

Recognizing the limits of our understanding makes us humble. It opens our minds to other people’s ideas and ways of thinking. It offers us lessons about how to improve our socio-political-economic systems.

And like Donald Rumsfeld once said, it is important to distinguish between different kinds of not knowing. He said, there are known knowns. These are the things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. These are he things that we know we don’t know. And there are unknown unknowns. These are the things we don’t know that we don’t know. And embracing the known unknowns keeps us from the curse of the Hubris Syndrome.

But sadly, due to our polarized politics, we find each other’s views and opinions repugnant. We denigrate and distort our opponents proposals. And the question that abounds, is “how could such smart people be so dumb?”