Ever wonder why conservatives act the way they do? Turns out they may all be suffering from a well-documented psychological phenomenon that makes them think they’re super smart, while they are, in fact, idiots.
An unrelated post on Kottke.org drew my attention to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, or the tendency for individuals with little knowledge to systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge. Individuals experiencing the Dunning-Kruger Effect consistently fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy, and vastly overestimate their skills. Or, in the slightly more poetic phrasing of Charles Darwin, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
The Dunning-Kruger Effect would explain Rove, Cheney and Bush’s single-minded determination to invade Iraq, despite reams of contradictory evidence. They were convinced of their genius status, and knew way more than all those intelligence analysts and academics. Unfortunately, whilst in the thrall Dunning-Kruger, they failed to recognize that they were actually morons.
Here are some other things potentially explained by the Dunning-Kruger Effect:
- Stephen Harper’s climate change plan;
- The Bush Administration’s denial that global warming even exists;
- ‘New’ Coke;
- The last federal Liberal election campaign;
- Anything Bill O’Reilly has ever said; and
- Ezra Levant’s entire life so far.
Better living through psychology. This is what makes many conservatives so dangerous- the profound confidence they have all the answers, without any intelligence, insight or actual solutions to back it up.
I would argue that this is not limited to any one political party or political leaning, per se. Rather, this goes a long way to explaining the behaviour of most politicians. Indeed, ignorance is about the only explanation I can think of for someone wanting to get into politics in the first place.
Oh, I agree. I simply chose conservatives because their idiocy has, of late, resulted in the most spectacular failures.
I think any dogmatist suffers from DKE- replacing original thought and inquiry with received truths.
The left is chock-full of these folks.
Hey… didn’t you go to school for Politics?
Curious
People/Politicians without related academic training and professional experience will always over estimate their associated abilities.
This is a dangerous trap everyone can easily fall into. The anti-global warming, and the anti-evolution crowds are a good examples of large groups of people socially supporting each others ignorance. Truly believing they are correct and scientist who studied data in these areas for years are wrong.
Please tell me these same self inflated fools are not the same ones filling the ranks of the right.
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graeme, well said, simply choosing leadership based on their dogmatic idiocy is an invitation for spectacular failures.
Leadership which take extreme measures to hid themselves from the public eye, only reinforce their dogmatic idiocy.
It is doubly important that the leadership is not run by people suffering from DKE. To avoid this I think we should examine our politician’s academic and professional experience. Joe average who does not stress me with difficult questions is not really a good leadership choice.
[...] This sheds light on the behaviour of conservatives. [...]
Or, as I wrote previously: “They lie, they misrepresent, they use decoy arguments and make ad hominem attacks. For them, the use of duplicity, of secrecy, of arguments of (non-existent) conspiracy, of fact (and non-fact) selectivity/cherry-picking, of quacks/fake experts, as well as putting forth logical fallacies, are simply means to an end.
And this “end” is the following: to promulgate, support and defend their beliefs or their ideologies.
Truth be told: these are the only things that truly matter to them.”
Alternately, it is simply a matter of using the Eight Principles of Incompetence:
Zeroth Principle: Incompetence is driven by intellectual sloth.
First Principle: Incompetence surrounds itself with incompetence.
Second Principle: Incompetence is ethics-impaired.
Third Principle: Incompetence abhors transparency and accountability.
Fourth Principle: Incompetence does or says anything to defend itself.
Fifth Principle: Incompetence always supports incompetence.
Sixth Principle: Violence is the last refuge of incompetence.
Seventh Principle: Incompetence is nothing but consistent with itself.
Neocons are paragons of human incompetence.
From My Blahg comment link:
“..we’re still using the old paradigm of meaning and they’re busily deploying the equivalent of malware and DOS attacks.–The Poor Man Institute”
Nice.
They want power, not truth.
As the generations pass by, each one further still disconnected from the real life experience of their parents that defined post war liberalism, they get crazy. The pathology of all humans I mean, that’s why we go to world war every 40-50 years.
Or – it could be the military industrial complex, I guess…
I make it a habit to peruse the progressive bloggers, liblogs, and blogging tories. In all honestly, I don’t see much difference in any of them when it comes to suffering the above afflictions. Any idea that one side is significantly better behaved than the other is fantasy.
I’m fascinated, however, by people who think their side is much better behaved. It’s a weird psychological condition.
I make it a habit to peruse the progressive bloggers, liblogs, and blogging tories. In all honestly, I don’t see much difference in any of them when it comes to suffering the above afflictions.
Actually, what you’ve been doing is making a habit of trotting around progressive blogs asserting this equivalence without providing any evidence, no matter how many times you’ve been asked.
Your bad faith is proving the point quite nicely.
there’s a term in academia called the “imposter phenomenon”. basically it’s the opposite of the effect you describe. it occurs when the more you study, the more you see how much you still have to learn.. thus you never quite feel like you know enough.