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David Dunning on the Dunning-Kruger Effect · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,
0:11
Speaker 1: and what can I tell you? His name is on
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Speaker 1: the tip of your tongue. You know all about his research,
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Speaker 1: You know all about the charts that the Internet created
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Speaker 1: based on his research. You probably didn't know that that
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Speaker 1: wasn't originally his work. David Dunning, famous for the Dunning
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Speaker 1: Kruger Effect, professor of psychology at Michigan. We talk about
0:33
Speaker 1: everything his research, why people don't know what they don't know,
0:37
Speaker 1: how we could get better at decision making. Just absolutely
0:41
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation. If you're at all interested in human
0:43
Speaker 1: cognition and psychology in why we think we're better at
0:47
Speaker 1: tasks than we really are, then you're gonna find this
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Speaker 1: to be an absolutely fascinating discussion. So, with no further ado,
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Speaker 1: my conversation with David Dunning. This is Masters in Business
1:02
Speaker 1: with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest
1:07
Speaker 1: this week is David Dunning. He is a professor of
1:10
Speaker 1: psychology at the University of Michigan, where he focuses on
1:14
Speaker 1: the psychology underlying human misbelief He is best known for
1:20
Speaker 1: his study with colleague Justin Krueger, Unskilled and unaware of it,
1:26
Speaker 1: how difficulties and recognizing one's own incompetence lead to self
1:31
Speaker 1: inflated assessments. Dunning Krueger showed that people who were the
1:35
Speaker 1: worst performers significantly overestimated how good they were. He is
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Speaker 1: also the author of the book Self Insight, Roadblocks and
1:45
Speaker 1: Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself. David Dunning, Welcome
1:49
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. It's a pleasure to be here. I have
1:51
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this conversation for a long time.
1:55
Speaker 1: I am a giant fan of your work, and I
1:58
Speaker 1: have to start with a really simple question. What's the
2:02
Speaker 1: origin of the study? What led you to a thesis
2:05
Speaker 1: that we're really bad at self evaluation? Well, if you're
2:10
Speaker 1: an academic, you meet up with many students, and you
2:13
Speaker 1: meet up with many colleagues who say outrageous things, and
2:17
Speaker 1: you just have to wonder, don't they know what they're saying?
2:20
Speaker 1: Is let me say this diplomatically odd, suboptimal. And over
2:26
Speaker 1: the years I just was intrigued with finding out whether
2:29
Speaker 1: or not people knew when they were saying things that
2:31
Speaker 1: were outrageous. We're obviously wrong on the face of it.
2:35
Speaker 1: And so one day Justin Krueger walked into my office
2:39
Speaker 1: said he wanted to a study with me, and I said, well,
2:41
Speaker 1: I have this high high risk reward study to do,
2:44
Speaker 1: and it has to do with a question I've often
2:46
Speaker 1: wondered about. And so we did the first original series
2:50
Speaker 1: of studies and were astonished at how little people who
2:54
Speaker 1: didn't know I didn't know about how little they knew.
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Speaker 1: So I was on the impression and that most academics
3:01
Speaker 1: have a thesis and there's some data supporting it, and
3:04
Speaker 1: when they go out and test it, they have a
3:07
Speaker 1: little confirmation bias and they see what they expected to see.
3:11
Speaker 1: You're saying, you guys were just shocked by the results
3:15
Speaker 1: of this study. That's right. I mean we expected it
3:17
Speaker 1: to work, because if you think about the logic of it,
3:18
Speaker 1: it has to work. The question was one of magnitude.
3:22
Speaker 1: When a student was failing the course, for example, or
3:24
Speaker 1: were giving them a pop quiz on grammar, uh, did
3:29
Speaker 1: they have some inkling that they were performing really poorly?
3:32
Speaker 1: And the answer was maybe a little, but not much,
3:36
Speaker 1: and they were missing their true performance level by a
3:38
Speaker 1: mile by a mile. So so how much of this that?
3:42
Speaker 1: That really raises um a number of questions. So I
3:46
Speaker 1: love the phrase metacognition, the ability to self evaluate your
3:51
Speaker 1: skill set and your findings. Essentially find that this is
3:54
Speaker 1: highly correlated with an underlying skill. Whenever I try and
3:58
Speaker 1: explain this to a lay person, it's pro golfers know
4:01
Speaker 1: how good they are and where the weaknesses in their
4:04
Speaker 1: games are. Amateurs have no idea that they're not remotely
4:08
Speaker 1: as good as they think they are. That is that
4:10
Speaker 1: a fair Oh I'm a perfect example of this. So
4:13
Speaker 1: when I go out in golf, I often end up
4:16
Speaker 1: in the in the rough when I when I drive
4:18
Speaker 1: the ball and then I see the ball going the
4:21
Speaker 1: roof and I go out to find it later on,
4:22
Speaker 1: and I'm always over guessing how far the ball went
4:25
Speaker 1: in the rough by about thirty yards. And I know this,
4:29
Speaker 1: yet every time I drive the ball into the rough,
4:31
Speaker 1: I'm looking in the wrong plates. Uh so, yeah, I
4:34
Speaker 1: mean amateur golfers don't know such terms as of course
4:38
Speaker 1: management for example. Uh there's a number of concepts and
4:41
Speaker 1: number of ideas they just simply don't have available to them.
4:43
Speaker 1: And as a consequence, I think they're they're doing the
4:45
Speaker 1: best possible job, when in fact there's a whole realm
4:48
Speaker 1: of competency as they don't know about. They're just wholly
4:50
Speaker 1: unaware of what they don't know about. That's right. So
4:53
Speaker 1: you begin theer with a amusing anecdote. Tell us about
5:00
Speaker 1: out the Pittsburgh bank robber MacArthur Wheeler. Well, MacArthur Wheeler
5:05
Speaker 1: was a aspirant bank robber who decided to go out
5:11
Speaker 1: and rob, but needed a disguise. And he had heard
5:14
Speaker 1: that if you rub your face with lemon juice, it
5:17
Speaker 1: renders the face um uh, fuzzy or even uh invisible
5:23
Speaker 1: to bank security cameras, and so he actually did test
5:27
Speaker 1: it out. He actually rubbed his face with uninduced at home,
5:30
Speaker 1: pointed a polaroid camera or whatever at his face, and
5:34
Speaker 1: then he wasn't there. He miss aimed the camera is
5:37
Speaker 1: he thought he was insible, but he thought he was invisible.
5:40
Speaker 1: He went out with no actual disguise, rob to Pittsburgh
5:43
Speaker 1: area banks during the daytime, um uh, was immediately caught
5:49
Speaker 1: on security cameras. Uh. Those tapes were broadcast on the news,
5:54
Speaker 1: and he himself was caught before the eleven o'clock news hour,
5:58
Speaker 1: and he was incredulous because, as he said, I wore
6:01
Speaker 1: the juice. I wore the juice. Uh. So um thus
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Speaker 1: ended his career. But these are sorts of mistakes we
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Speaker 1: make all the time. We think we we have a
6:11
Speaker 1: strategy that's going to work, and to our surprise, the
6:14
Speaker 1: world has a different lesson for us to learn. So
6:18
Speaker 1: medic cognition sometimes looks a little bit like over confidence.
6:22
Speaker 1: How similar or different are the two? Well, metic cognition
6:26
Speaker 1: is a number of things, a number of skills that
6:29
Speaker 1: underlie um being able to evaluate your judgments, evaluate your decisions.
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Speaker 1: So some often it's over confidence. Usually it's over confidence.
6:38
Speaker 1: It can be under confidence, thinking you can't do something
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Speaker 1: that you can do. Uh. It might be over confidence
6:44
Speaker 1: or under confidence. But does your confidence rise and fall
6:49
Speaker 1: with the accuracy of your judgment? So is there a
6:51
Speaker 1: relationship whether or not your confidences is a speed dometer
6:55
Speaker 1: that overstates or understates how well uh you're doing. But
6:59
Speaker 1: there it also is knowing how to make a judgment, uh,
7:03
Speaker 1: knowing when to stop thinking and start acting. So knowing
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Speaker 1: when uh, there's a doubt that you really should be
7:12
Speaker 1: following up on. So over confidence as a phenomenon I
7:16
Speaker 1: think lies within a whole family of skills that you
7:18
Speaker 1: can call metacognition, which is basically skill in knowing how
7:23
Speaker 1: to evaluate your thinking and control you're thinking. Quite fascinating,
7:27
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about your unskilled and unaware
7:32
Speaker 1: of it. This blew up into one of the most
7:35
Speaker 1: famous psychology papers ever. When when you and Krueger were
7:39
Speaker 1: writing this, did you have any idea that it was
7:42
Speaker 1: going to be this explosive? No, because I thought it
7:45
Speaker 1: was going to have trouble being published, because it actually
7:48
Speaker 1: is an unusual piece of work given the usual structure
7:51
Speaker 1: of a paper in the journal we ultimately submitted to.
7:55
Speaker 1: So the fact that it blew up was a big surprise.
7:59
Speaker 1: The fact that it got published was also a big surprise,
8:02
Speaker 1: which was very very happy because internally I thought it
8:04
Speaker 1: was a good piece of work, but I didn't know
8:05
Speaker 1: if the world was going to agree. So I I've
8:08
Speaker 1: seen your work misstated in a variety of ways. I'm
8:12
Speaker 1: sure you have. Also. The one that I noticed all
8:16
Speaker 1: the time is stupid people don't know they're stupid. And
8:20
Speaker 1: while that could very well be true, that is not
8:24
Speaker 1: the basic theme of of your research. Is it no,
8:27
Speaker 1: we were very clear from the outset that the Dunne
8:30
Speaker 1: Ruger effect is something that can visit anybody at any time.
8:34
Speaker 1: That is, each of us has our own pockets of
8:37
Speaker 1: incompetence and we just don't know when we wander into them.
8:40
Speaker 1: So it uh well. Often the one mistake that people
8:44
Speaker 1: make is thinking about the Dunne Krueger effect is about them,
8:48
Speaker 1: those as you say, stupid people out there, and the
8:50
Speaker 1: paper really was really about us and ourselves and being
8:56
Speaker 1: vigilant about the fact that sometimes we're going to wander
8:59
Speaker 1: into our own little personal disaster. Is not knowing that
9:02
Speaker 1: a disaster is imminent. So people trying to explain Dunning
9:06
Speaker 1: Krueger themselves are suffering from the Dunning Kruger effects in
9:09
Speaker 1: many different ways. So if you give me a moment,
9:12
Speaker 1: two different ways um that people get it wrong. First
9:16
Speaker 1: is to think about other people and it's not about me.
9:20
Speaker 1: The second is thinking that incompetent people are the most
9:23
Speaker 1: confident people in the room. That's not necessarily true. Occasionally
9:26
Speaker 1: that shows up in our data, but they are usually
9:29
Speaker 1: less confident than the really competent people, but not that much.
9:33
Speaker 1: And but the real thing that I think is fascinating
9:36
Speaker 1: and this has only happened in the past five years.
9:39
Speaker 1: Is that if you google images of the Dunning Kruger effect,
9:41
Speaker 1: the charts, the chart, well we did that. Those aren't
9:45
Speaker 1: our charts. So you didn't do Mount Stupid or the
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Speaker 1: value of despair, and no, we did not. That has
9:53
Speaker 1: nothing to do whatsoever with our ninety paper or anything
9:56
Speaker 1: that we did subsequently. And uh, two notes of At first,
10:01
Speaker 1: I think it's it's delicious that a lot of people
10:03
Speaker 1: think of the Dunning Kruger effect. They're talking about the
10:06
Speaker 1: Dunning Kruger effect, their videotaping talks and Dunning Kruger effect,
10:09
Speaker 1: and what they're talking about is not the Dunning Kruger effect. Um,
10:12
Speaker 1: they're suffering the effect, about the effect itself. Um, that's
10:19
Speaker 1: the first. The second note, though, is given this situation,
10:22
Speaker 1: we did face a dilemma in the lab, how do
10:27
Speaker 1: we fix this? How do we correct this? And so
10:30
Speaker 1: this is true. In part we decided the most efficient
10:34
Speaker 1: ethical thing to do was to steal the idea from
10:36
Speaker 1: the internet, because the other problem with the idea, other
10:39
Speaker 1: than it not being the Dunning Kuger effect, is that's
10:41
Speaker 1: it's more interesting than the Dunning Kruger effect. So but
10:44
Speaker 1: we stole the idea, tested it, and it turns out
10:46
Speaker 1: that mount stupid value of despair a plateau of enlightenment
10:50
Speaker 1: time course of people see that. We pretty much get
10:52
Speaker 1: that um pattern as we pay people through a completely
10:57
Speaker 1: novel task. So internet is right. So so in other words,
11:01
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm intrigued and fascinated by this. You never
11:05
Speaker 1: put out a chart. I always assumed that that chart
11:09
Speaker 1: had to come from your data, because what are people
11:12
Speaker 1: just brewing lines and making it up and ps it
11:16
Speaker 1: intuitively looks right. You would assume, Hey, when so I
11:21
Speaker 1: play tennis, I only started recently, less than ten years ago.
11:25
Speaker 1: And when you start out and you're starting hit the
11:27
Speaker 1: ball and you feel like you have some control and
11:29
Speaker 1: you have some skill, and and then you're you're working
11:32
Speaker 1: your way up that mount stupid. And then when you
11:35
Speaker 1: actually start to develop some skill, not that I really have,
11:39
Speaker 1: but I'm better than I was five years ago, you realize, oh,
11:42
Speaker 1: I didn't know what the heck I was doing, not
11:44
Speaker 1: just a ball and getting lucky when it catches the tape,
11:47
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you realize, oh, I'm way
11:49
Speaker 1: down this And then you continue playing, you get a
11:52
Speaker 1: little better and a little better. I don't know if
11:54
Speaker 1: this is all rationalization, but it intuitively seems to make sense. Well,
12:00
Speaker 1: not only does it intuitively make sense, it turns out
12:02
Speaker 1: to make sense. Uh. And in a paper with Carmen Sanchez,
12:06
Speaker 1: we were able to demonstrate that basically what happens is
12:10
Speaker 1: when you start a task. And what we did is
12:12
Speaker 1: we had people. We put people in a post apocalyptic
12:15
Speaker 1: world where they had to without supervision, but with feedback
12:19
Speaker 1: diagnose who was infected with a zombie disease I hope,
12:25
Speaker 1: hoping that that wasn't something that people had experienced with.
12:28
Speaker 1: And basically what happens is if you're a beginner, you
12:32
Speaker 1: start out way at the beginning, being appropriately conscious. You
12:35
Speaker 1: really don't know what you're doing, and you know it.
12:37
Speaker 1: But the problem is that you have a few successes
12:39
Speaker 1: they're probably due to luck more than skill, and you
12:42
Speaker 1: think you have it. That is, people arrive at a
12:46
Speaker 1: theory based on data which is far too early, far
12:49
Speaker 1: too sparse, and far too unreliable, but they think I
12:52
Speaker 1: got it, and then the next phase that they have
12:54
Speaker 1: to go through is realizing, oh, that theory really doesn't work. Uh,
12:58
Speaker 1: and so we've been able to track that a to
13:00
Speaker 1: show that uh and a number of studies. So the
13:04
Speaker 1: internet is right. UM. I'm very pleased with its intuition
13:07
Speaker 1: on this one. UM, but it is a little bit
13:11
Speaker 1: odd to get credit for an insight that we never had,
13:14
Speaker 1: but we're very happy to steal. So essentially, when you
13:17
Speaker 1: run the data showing UM the correlation between skill and
13:24
Speaker 1: UM ability to self evaluate, you end up with a
13:28
Speaker 1: chart that looks in this paper, looks remarkably similar to
13:32
Speaker 1: all the various pop psychology uh mount stupid charts that
13:37
Speaker 1: are out there. Well. Yeah, as you gain experience, you
13:39
Speaker 1: unfortunately start with a burst of overconfidence. I got this
13:42
Speaker 1: you No, you don't. And then experience basically is correcting
13:46
Speaker 1: your flattering impression of your skill as time goes on,
13:50
Speaker 1: until at some point learning stops because of experiences, not
13:56
Speaker 1: new or learning does experience human limits. But that that
14:02
Speaker 1: is a pattern. By the way, if anybody flies an airplane,
14:05
Speaker 1: they perfectly understand this pattern. It's not beginning pilots who
14:09
Speaker 1: are the most dangerous. It's pilots with let's say six
14:13
Speaker 1: hundred UM flight hours. They have enough experience. I think
14:17
Speaker 1: that they've got this, and they enter into what's referred
14:19
Speaker 1: to as the killing zone where accents are most likely
14:23
Speaker 1: to happen. All of this raises the question of how
14:27
Speaker 1: much of an independent skill is self assessment? Or asked differently,
14:31
Speaker 1: do you have to be skilled at the underlying task
14:34
Speaker 1: in hands in order to have any skill set in
14:37
Speaker 1: evaluating it or can they be learned independently. I think
14:41
Speaker 1: research actually has to look at this a little bit more. Uh.
14:45
Speaker 1: One of the things that we know, and we followed
14:47
Speaker 1: up on this is there's um direct skill in doing
14:51
Speaker 1: the task, direct skill and doing the judgment, and then
14:55
Speaker 1: there is potentially another layer which is evaluating the judgment.
15:00
Speaker 1: The question is how much does that second judgment rely
15:02
Speaker 1: on knowledge in the first And from our data it no,
15:06
Speaker 1: It's clear that accuracy in knowing whether or not you're
15:11
Speaker 1: right is very correlated with accuracy in the first place.
15:15
Speaker 1: Are you really good at the skill? Can you reach
15:17
Speaker 1: an accurate judgment? Now? It's not true in everything. It's
15:21
Speaker 1: not true in golf. Um, I know just how bad
15:25
Speaker 1: my golf game is because I tend to score my
15:28
Speaker 1: rounds not in terms of shots, but in terms of
15:30
Speaker 1: how many balls did I lose, of course, and that's
15:34
Speaker 1: a that's a metric that gives me a pretty good
15:37
Speaker 1: indication of how bad I am. So you could self
15:39
Speaker 1: evaluate without even seeing your skill, your your actual scorecard score.
15:44
Speaker 1: You just count the lost balls. That yeah, that's the
15:47
Speaker 1: real thing. Um And but there are a lot of
15:51
Speaker 1: skills though that uh, accuracy at the medicaguntive task. Judging
15:56
Speaker 1: whether or not you're right that skill really depends on
15:59
Speaker 1: your skill in the first test, which is gaining a
16:01
Speaker 1: right judgment. And for example of financial forecasting would be
16:06
Speaker 1: an example. That's easy pickings, that's fishing a barrel from
16:11
Speaker 1: what I hear. And giving a good lecture in my world, well,
16:15
Speaker 1: you do have to judge internally, am I really giving
16:20
Speaker 1: a good lecture or not? You can't really depend on
16:22
Speaker 1: the audience. Audiences can be good, audiences can be bad.
16:26
Speaker 1: And so but the choices you make, um, well, they
16:30
Speaker 1: depend on skill. But your evaluation of those choices probably
16:34
Speaker 1: depend on how good you are and knowing what a
16:36
Speaker 1: good lecture looks like, what a good lecture sounds like.
16:39
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about academic psychology and
16:44
Speaker 1: your background and what it's like teaching these days. You
16:47
Speaker 1: got your PhD at Stanford at a time when I
16:52
Speaker 1: guess you could still say it today. It was the
16:54
Speaker 1: mecca of psychology, wasn't it? Yes? It was. So who
16:58
Speaker 1: would you study under? I studied under Ross primarily was
17:01
Speaker 1: also mentored a little bit by Phoebe Elsworth, whose last
17:05
Speaker 1: few years I've been a colleague of at Michigan. But
17:08
Speaker 1: it really was a village um. Everybody among the faculty
17:13
Speaker 1: was on the same page, so to speak. And so
17:15
Speaker 1: I'd have to say that entire faculty raised me as
17:18
Speaker 1: it did a lot of other people. Quite interesting. So
17:21
Speaker 1: you've been studying psychology for a long time. Have you
17:25
Speaker 1: found in the rest of your life's decision making that
17:30
Speaker 1: you've become more rational and a bitter decision maker. I
17:35
Speaker 1: think life has provided those lessons. Yes, and I've certainly
17:40
Speaker 1: become more experienced in my work. So, Um, I bear
17:44
Speaker 1: the scars, Uh, I bear the wounds, but I do
17:47
Speaker 1: think that I am a little wiser because of it.
17:51
Speaker 1: I One of the things, or one of the principles
17:53
Speaker 1: I often live by, is are you vaguely embarrassed by
17:57
Speaker 1: something you did five ten years go? And so I'll
18:02
Speaker 1: read things that I did five or ten years ago,
18:04
Speaker 1: and I find myself I shouldn't have done it that way,
18:07
Speaker 1: and I take that as a pleasant emotion. It's suggests
18:11
Speaker 1: I'm in a different place now than I was back then.
18:14
Speaker 1: So I go through something similar in every five years.
18:17
Speaker 1: I'm mortified of the five year younger version of me. Um.
18:20
Speaker 1: But I never took the next step to say, well,
18:23
Speaker 1: I guess this means I'm growing. I always been just
18:26
Speaker 1: so horrified at at the younger version. Um, I didn't
18:30
Speaker 1: make the leap that. Oh, I guess this means that
18:32
Speaker 1: that's progress. Um. So let's talk a little bit about
18:37
Speaker 1: about things like that, about learning and norms. You write
18:40
Speaker 1: a lot about social norms. Why do you find this
18:43
Speaker 1: topic so so fascinating? Well, social norms, I think is
18:47
Speaker 1: the surprisingly understudying thing in the behavioral sciences. There are
18:51
Speaker 1: people who study it, but social norms are an incredible
18:55
Speaker 1: guide both to successful human behavior, not only for individuals
19:00
Speaker 1: but for society but also at times, um, the source
19:04
Speaker 1: of the greatest calamity, if you will, so, Um, why
19:09
Speaker 1: is it? Give us some examples to better understand that? Well?
19:12
Speaker 1: I think that the clearest example that comes to mind is,
19:17
Speaker 1: let's take norms of politeness. And let's talk about the
19:20
Speaker 1: fact that the FAA has recorded I believe, I'm not
19:24
Speaker 1: sure the numbers sixteen times where the crew in the
19:27
Speaker 1: cockpit of a of an airliner knew that the pilot
19:32
Speaker 1: was doing something wrong and they were going to crash
19:34
Speaker 1: into a mountain. The pilot didn't seem to know, but
19:37
Speaker 1: they're polite, and so they indirectly keep telling the pilot
19:41
Speaker 1: you better change things up, but they don't say it directly.
19:44
Speaker 1: And if you listen to the black box recordings, those
19:47
Speaker 1: planes crash. Uh, So there's a there's a norm that we,
19:52
Speaker 1: uh try not to embarrass the other person. It's a
19:55
Speaker 1: very important norm for day to day life. Imagine day
19:59
Speaker 1: to day life without it. But it can go to
20:01
Speaker 1: extremes in terms of not telling pilots that, uh, they're
20:04
Speaker 1: on a course to disaster, or not telling doctors that
20:09
Speaker 1: they're operating on the wrong leg for example. Really, and
20:12
Speaker 1: so to me, that sounds a lot like just deferral
20:15
Speaker 1: to authority. How much of that is just being a
20:19
Speaker 1: good little soldier and how much of that is social norms?
20:22
Speaker 1: Were they you know, two sides of the same coin, Well,
20:25
Speaker 1: they're two sides of the same coin. I mean, we
20:26
Speaker 1: defer to authority, but we also defer to each other,
20:29
Speaker 1: and by and large sets there because it has an
20:32
Speaker 1: overall positive impact. But it can go too far. Um
20:36
Speaker 1: so uh. And the question becomes knowing when it's going
20:39
Speaker 1: too far and being able to break the norm. And
20:41
Speaker 1: what I find interesting though, is that norms permeate our life.
20:45
Speaker 1: For example, there are norms that we know that we
20:49
Speaker 1: don't know that we know. So, for example, just just
20:52
Speaker 1: give you a one example. We know it's a teenage
20:57
Speaker 1: ninja turtles as opposed to a teenage ninja to turtles
21:00
Speaker 1: as opposed to mutant ninja teenage turtles. That sounds odd.
21:06
Speaker 1: There's a rule in how you stack up adjectives before
21:08
Speaker 1: and now uh, and we all follow that rule and
21:11
Speaker 1: we know when that rules being violated, but we don't
21:13
Speaker 1: know that rule. But there are a lot of rules
21:15
Speaker 1: in our language, a lot of rules in our behavior,
21:18
Speaker 1: a lot of rules in our etiquette that we're following,
21:21
Speaker 1: but we're so skilled at them we don't know that
21:23
Speaker 1: we're following. We just internalize them and we're not aware
21:25
Speaker 1: of that. That's right, And so so how does that
21:27
Speaker 1: come back? How do you deal with that when you
21:30
Speaker 1: have a deferring co pilot and the pilots about to
21:34
Speaker 1: hit them out. You have to train people to have
21:37
Speaker 1: a different norm. So you just completely break the underlying
21:40
Speaker 1: norm and replace it with something for safety purposes. That's right.
21:44
Speaker 1: Either you invent a procedure or you invent a piece
21:47
Speaker 1: of equipment, so it's going to tell the pilot that
21:48
Speaker 1: they're in error, UM or a piece of equipment that
21:52
Speaker 1: prevents the error in the first place. So, for example,
21:55
Speaker 1: in terms of wrong side surgery, and this is a
21:57
Speaker 1: thing that can happen, but it happens much less than
21:59
Speaker 1: it used to basically because the medical profession has instituted
22:03
Speaker 1: procedures to just avoid the error another norm, if you will.
22:07
Speaker 1: So I remember when I had eye surgery. I'm having
22:10
Speaker 1: a pleasant conversation with the eye surgeon um beforehand, and
22:14
Speaker 1: at the end he has, oh, by the way, it's
22:16
Speaker 1: your right eye we're doing today, right, and uh, I
22:20
Speaker 1: go yes, And well he knew it was the right eye,
22:22
Speaker 1: but he had to check and then he signed, you know,
22:26
Speaker 1: the forehead and above my right just to make sure
22:30
Speaker 1: that to avoid wrong side surgery. So I'm just horrified
22:34
Speaker 1: at the thought that there's a room full of surgeons
22:37
Speaker 1: and someone starts sawing off the wrong leg and nobody
22:39
Speaker 1: says anything. Yes, well, because it is the case that
22:45
Speaker 1: people may be uncertain, they don't know how to intervene. Hey,
22:49
Speaker 1: that's the wrong leg. Not to be funny, but I'm
22:53
Speaker 1: it's just terrifying. Oh I know. But but remember this
22:57
Speaker 1: in some sense, it goes all the way back to
22:58
Speaker 1: the Pilgrim experiment. Uh. And the key about the Pilgrim
23:02
Speaker 1: experiment is not that people gleefully went all the way
23:04
Speaker 1: to shock another person and basically a commit involuntary manslaughter.
23:09
Speaker 1: That's what the moment experiment was. They didn't know how
23:11
Speaker 1: to get out. And what I'm intrigued by the film
23:16
Speaker 1: of the Milgram experiment, for example, is that the second thing, uh,
23:20
Speaker 1: the subjects tend to say when they're trying to get
23:22
Speaker 1: out is they say, you can have your four fifty back.
23:25
Speaker 1: That is that the social contract is a norm, it
23:28
Speaker 1: has to be followed, and they have to aggregate that
23:32
Speaker 1: contract before they can stop doing involuntary manslaughter essentially. But
23:36
Speaker 1: the real thing about that experiment is people don't know
23:38
Speaker 1: how to dissent. It's not something we're necessarily well trained
23:42
Speaker 1: in we're trained in cooperating, we are trained in deferring.
23:46
Speaker 1: That's not true all the time, but if you start
23:48
Speaker 1: looking around in life, you realize we do it a
23:52
Speaker 1: lot more than we think we're doing it. But we're
23:54
Speaker 1: not really well trained in the psychology of dissent um
23:59
Speaker 1: or the psych collogy of objection. That's just not something
24:02
Speaker 1: we do. So how much of this is institutional schools, family, whatever,
24:07
Speaker 1: and how much of this is biological? Hey, we're social
24:10
Speaker 1: primates and that's how we've evolved. I think it's it
24:13
Speaker 1: has to be both. Um. That is, both people and
24:16
Speaker 1: institutions evolved to create norms that do the best to
24:21
Speaker 1: make the day pleasant, survivable, to make the day efficient.
24:26
Speaker 1: And uh, it does have that. Norms do have that effect.
24:29
Speaker 1: Imagine a world in which we didn't have norms. Your
24:32
Speaker 1: enthusiast that that is a whole show about what happens
24:36
Speaker 1: if one person decides he's not going to pay attention
24:39
Speaker 1: to any of the social That's absolutely right, and it's
24:41
Speaker 1: incredibly entertaining, but I wouldn't want to live in it.
24:43
Speaker 1: It's sometimes difficult to watch. It just goes to show
24:47
Speaker 1: you how ingrain. Those norms are the not to not
24:51
Speaker 1: to become a television critic. But the first couple of
24:55
Speaker 1: seasons of that show, I remember having a pose it
24:58
Speaker 1: and just take a rake because it was so cringe
25:02
Speaker 1: worthy and so difficult and uncomfortable to watch, even as
25:06
Speaker 1: it was hilarious. Uh. I never really thought of it
25:10
Speaker 1: in terms of norms. You just think of him as
25:12
Speaker 1: a you know, cranky, difficult person. But I guess it's
25:15
Speaker 1: all norms. Well, it is all norms, And if there's
25:17
Speaker 1: a biology to it, it's that we are primed, uh
25:22
Speaker 1: to have anxiety mechanisms that are really ready to go
25:25
Speaker 1: when we're in a situation of of norm violation. So
25:28
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you're watching something on television separated from you.
25:31
Speaker 1: You know it's fictional, and yet you're feeling real emotion,
25:34
Speaker 1: and the emotion is exactly the emotion you feel around
25:37
Speaker 1: norm violations. It's anxiety, it's nervousness, its tension um. That's
25:42
Speaker 1: fascinating and potentially speaks to how powerful that mechanism is
25:45
Speaker 1: within the body, within the species um and why norms
25:51
Speaker 1: hopefully work in society. So before we get off this topic,
25:54
Speaker 1: I have to circle back to the Milgram experiment and
25:58
Speaker 1: an unrelated the marshmallow experiments as well, all these things
26:03
Speaker 1: that listen. I've been out of college for a hundred years,
26:06
Speaker 1: but the things that I read through in in college
26:10
Speaker 1: level psychology, I keep reading about different studies that they're
26:14
Speaker 1: going back and saying, well, maybe there was a false
26:18
Speaker 1: bias built into the way the test was done, and
26:20
Speaker 1: when we try and recreate this, we're not getting the
26:23
Speaker 1: same level of of effect. Is the Milgram experiment still
26:30
Speaker 1: the operative obedience to authority in the world of psychology
26:33
Speaker 1: or has that been rolled back a little bit? I
26:36
Speaker 1: think people are reevaluating it as we speak. I know
26:40
Speaker 1: there has been some journalism that's been antagonistic to the
26:43
Speaker 1: Milgram effects. So I've actually gone back because I teach
26:46
Speaker 1: this stuff in this specific case and read the journalism
26:50
Speaker 1: and going back to the original study, and I think
26:53
Speaker 1: the Milgram experiment itself is still solid. But you do
26:56
Speaker 1: have to go back in a case by case basis,
26:58
Speaker 1: because it is the case that UM a lot of
27:02
Speaker 1: classic work is being re evaluated, UH, and you really
27:06
Speaker 1: do have to go back and UM review the original work,
27:10
Speaker 1: and you have to review the replications or review the
27:14
Speaker 1: rethinking if you will, and case by case there are
27:17
Speaker 1: different issues that you really have to think through. So UM,
27:21
Speaker 1: in the case the mil group experiment, I think that's
27:24
Speaker 1: uh that solid. In the case of the marshmallow experiment,
27:26
Speaker 1: clearly the uh the um headline is still the same.
27:32
Speaker 1: Kids who wait a long time when they're young have
27:36
Speaker 1: different life outcomes when they're teenagers, and so on. Uh.
27:39
Speaker 1: The argument is over what exactly does that represent? Does
27:42
Speaker 1: that represent personality or does that represent social class? Does
27:45
Speaker 1: that represent whether or not what environment you grew up in? Uh?
27:49
Speaker 1: So the issue has changed depending on which specific topic
27:52
Speaker 1: you are reviewing. Quite interesting, you write about a lot
27:56
Speaker 1: of things beyond metacognition. You cover a whole bunch of
28:00
Speaker 1: other areas. We haven't really talked about. Your book, which
28:03
Speaker 1: is a couple of years old already Self Insights, roadblocks
28:07
Speaker 1: and detours on the path to knowing thyself. There was
28:11
Speaker 1: something in the book that just cracked me up, which
28:14
Speaker 1: you don't normally get in an academic book. Um, you're special,
28:19
Speaker 1: and it turns out no, most of us are not special,
28:22
Speaker 1: and we are wholly unaware of that. We've been told
28:27
Speaker 1: most of our lives how special we are tell us
28:30
Speaker 1: why so few of us are actually special? Well, the
28:33
Speaker 1: problem is that, um, well, if you look at the
28:37
Speaker 1: complete person, each of us is special. But if you
28:40
Speaker 1: put us in any situation or any circumstance, we're most
28:43
Speaker 1: gonna mostly going to act like everybody else. Most of
28:47
Speaker 1: us are average. Most of us are average. Most of
28:49
Speaker 1: us are typical. I mean that in any specific circumstance.
28:53
Speaker 1: So if you argregate all that, all of who we
28:55
Speaker 1: are together, we yeah, we are special. But when it
28:58
Speaker 1: comes to specific situations, no, we're not special. And so
29:02
Speaker 1: what that does leave people with, though, is they people
29:06
Speaker 1: do have this idea that they are unique, that they
29:09
Speaker 1: are exceptional, and as a as a consequence, they can't
29:14
Speaker 1: I'm just doing the checkboxes, yep, right of course, Oh absolutely.
29:17
Speaker 1: And so what that means is that it turns out
29:21
Speaker 1: people have a good rough understanding of human nature. I'm
29:24
Speaker 1: not going to say it's perfect, that's my work, but
29:26
Speaker 1: they do have a good understanding of human nature. The
29:29
Speaker 1: mistake they make is that they think they stand outside
29:33
Speaker 1: that human nature, that they are different, they're special, that
29:36
Speaker 1: they're special. So, for example, we've done studies if we
29:40
Speaker 1: ask people, uh, there's going to be a a food
29:44
Speaker 1: drive at your campus. Let's say in a month, will
29:47
Speaker 1: you contribute to it? Um? And what percentage of people
29:50
Speaker 1: will contribute to it. They're pretty good at nailing the
29:52
Speaker 1: percentage of people on their campus are going to contribute
29:55
Speaker 1: to the food drive there. Rather, they sort of figure
29:57
Speaker 1: what the situation is, they can think about their experience.
30:00
Speaker 1: They come up with a good answer. Uh, and that
30:02
Speaker 1: answer turns out to be right. But when we ask them, okay,
30:05
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? Are you going to contribute?
30:07
Speaker 1: They way overestimate how much they're going to do the
30:09
Speaker 1: right thing. They're going to do the good thing. They're
30:11
Speaker 1: going to do the social thing, basically because they understand
30:15
Speaker 1: how the situation and external forces will prompt people to
30:21
Speaker 1: donate and to not donate, but they think they stand
30:24
Speaker 1: outside those forces. For them, it's just simply a decision
30:27
Speaker 1: do I want to donate or not? And a lot
30:29
Speaker 1: of people want to donate, so yeah, I'm going to donate.
30:31
Speaker 1: It turns out when the time comes, no, there's subject
30:34
Speaker 1: to all these external forces that push against donation as
30:38
Speaker 1: well as push forward donation. So they turn out to
30:42
Speaker 1: be typical just like everybody else. So let's let's talk
30:45
Speaker 1: about a related topic. UM. Again from the book about
30:49
Speaker 1: Moral Fortitude. You tell the the story about being on
30:52
Speaker 1: radio show UM around the time of the Clinton impeachment,
30:57
Speaker 1: almost a Trump impeachment. But this is this is funny.
31:00
Speaker 1: Plus years ago, the radio host goes off on a
31:04
Speaker 1: tirade about infidelity and the moral inferiority and failings of
31:08
Speaker 1: other people. And you had at your fingertips a bunch
31:12
Speaker 1: of research about how everybody's expectations of their own moral
31:17
Speaker 1: superiority sort of fit into the Dunning Kruger framework. We
31:22
Speaker 1: think we're much better at that than we really are. Well,
31:24
Speaker 1: that's true. That is because when you move to the
31:26
Speaker 1: moral domain the ethical domain, UH, people definitely have this
31:31
Speaker 1: folier than thou attitude. I won't do it, but other
31:33
Speaker 1: people will do it if it's bad. For example, I
31:37
Speaker 1: would never cheat on my beloved, but other people, of course,
31:41
Speaker 1: they're gonna cheat in their beloved. Um. And it turns
31:44
Speaker 1: out we did a number of studies not an infidelity
31:47
Speaker 1: but rather will you vote, uh, will be charitable? Will
31:50
Speaker 1: you will tread? Will you obey traffic laws? For example?
31:54
Speaker 1: And it turns out that people widely overestimate themselves that
31:58
Speaker 1: is a overestimate how moral, ethical, and good they will
32:02
Speaker 1: be relative to what they think about other people. And
32:05
Speaker 1: they also overestimate how moral and good they're going to
32:08
Speaker 1: be relative to the reality when we actually test either
32:13
Speaker 1: them or equivalent group of people. So, um, the question
32:19
Speaker 1: for us is people tendably they're morally superior. Are they
32:22
Speaker 1: making a mistake about other people? Are they being too
32:24
Speaker 1: cynical about other people? Are they being too optimistic about
32:27
Speaker 1: the self? And it turns out to be to my surprise,
32:31
Speaker 1: and this is completely the reverse of what I expected.
32:34
Speaker 1: People are wrong about themselves exactly because they think they're special. Huh.
32:38
Speaker 1: But so so, they're not being cynical about the rest
32:41
Speaker 1: of humanity. They pretty much have them naw, they just
32:44
Speaker 1: think they're better than everybody. That's right. With maybe one
32:47
Speaker 1: or two glaring exceptions, people are surprisingly accurate about the
32:52
Speaker 1: general rate about human nature in general, how other people
32:56
Speaker 1: are gonna be buffeted around by external forces. They just
32:59
Speaker 1: think they're for themselves are exempt from those forces, all right.
33:03
Speaker 1: So we have metic cognition issues when we're trying to
33:05
Speaker 1: do a specific task that requires skills. There's a similar
33:10
Speaker 1: issue with our own sense of self and ethics and
33:13
Speaker 1: moral turpitude. Um, what other areas are subject to the
33:18
Speaker 1: Dunning Kruger effect. Well, I don't know what else there
33:20
Speaker 1: might be, but is that everything is it thoughts in
33:24
Speaker 1: action and everything else has left over? No, there's also
33:27
Speaker 1: the future if you think so. People are also over
33:31
Speaker 1: optimistic about their prospects if you will really, oh absolutely, Uh.
33:36
Speaker 1: That is, people really underestimate how long it's going to
33:40
Speaker 1: take to complete projects. Uh, the underestimate or how long
33:45
Speaker 1: it's going to take for their business to be profitable. Uh.
33:48
Speaker 1: They when they're thinking about the future, they tend to
33:54
Speaker 1: base their planning and their ideas on the most optimistic
33:58
Speaker 1: scenario rather than the most pessimistic scenario area, or maybe
34:00
Speaker 1: even the most realistic scenario. So, um, there are things
34:05
Speaker 1: we missed, not only in terms of competence and character,
34:07
Speaker 1: but also about our prospects. So how do we explain that?
34:11
Speaker 1: I can imagine I could concoct a lovely narrative tale
34:15
Speaker 1: as to why having an optimism bias is good for
34:19
Speaker 1: the species. Even if you're the guy from Cave seventy
34:22
Speaker 1: three that doesn't come back from the mammoth aunt, everybody
34:25
Speaker 1: else has foreign meat for the winter. Is this just
34:29
Speaker 1: a crazy narrative story or is there some evolutionary component
34:32
Speaker 1: to us Well, there is an evolutionary component to it
34:36
Speaker 1: and an adaptability component to it, but it's complicated. So
34:40
Speaker 1: the fact that people commit to things far too optimistically
34:43
Speaker 1: really does create those things. I mean, books are written, um,
34:48
Speaker 1: Businesses are developed. Um. Uh, movies are made, even though
34:53
Speaker 1: the people who start them out did far more work
34:56
Speaker 1: and are now far more depressed and tired than they
35:00
Speaker 1: ever imagined they would be at the end of those projects.
35:02
Speaker 1: But um, if they had only been prepared for how
35:05
Speaker 1: long it was going to take, they probably would have
35:07
Speaker 1: come up with a better project, a better business, and
35:09
Speaker 1: a better book. Uh. So things get made, but people
35:14
Speaker 1: will fail or they won't produce really what they're capable
35:17
Speaker 1: of producing. Very interesting, all of which leads to one
35:21
Speaker 1: big question, which is why do we seem to make
35:26
Speaker 1: these same errors in judgment? Is it's something about the
35:30
Speaker 1: way we learn? Is it something about our fragile egos?
35:33
Speaker 1: Why as a species are we unable to get by
35:37
Speaker 1: some of these fairly obvious flaws. Well, I think there
35:41
Speaker 1: are two things involved. One comes from the holier than
35:44
Speaker 1: that work, which is for overweighting our intentions and the
35:48
Speaker 1: part of our personality to produce things that that's part
35:50
Speaker 1: of what's going on when we repeat that, the power
35:52
Speaker 1: of our personality to because well, I will do this,
35:56
Speaker 1: because I want to do this, uh and I uh,
36:01
Speaker 1: that is part. Uh, that's something that we overestimate. The
36:04
Speaker 1: other is the competence angle, which is we really don't
36:07
Speaker 1: know what we don't know and RUMs felt unknown unknowns? Well,
36:11
Speaker 1: the world is filled with unknown unknowns and uh, and
36:16
Speaker 1: we don't know well, not only do we not know them,
36:19
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to the fact we don't know them.
36:21
Speaker 1: I mean too many people out there. The idea of
36:23
Speaker 1: unknown unknowns is still a novel concept, but it is
36:27
Speaker 1: something that they don't know what they don't know. But
36:31
Speaker 1: there is a lot of work showing that people just
36:33
Speaker 1: don't pay attention to what they don't know when they're
36:36
Speaker 1: making predictions or when they're planning things out. They don't
36:39
Speaker 1: sit back and ask, Okay, what is it that I
36:41
Speaker 1: don't know here? What's still open? What are the possibilities
36:45
Speaker 1: that I'm not considering? Not only that, am I concerning
36:49
Speaker 1: the fact that there are unknown unknowns and I should
36:53
Speaker 1: be planning for that possibility. So you mentioned earlier planning.
36:58
Speaker 1: I saw something kind of interesting around January nine of
37:02
Speaker 1: this year. That's the date when most people's New Year's
37:05
Speaker 1: resolutions fail. Does that sound remotely plausible or is that
37:10
Speaker 1: just um something else from the internet. I'm surprised that
37:14
Speaker 1: our resolutions last that long. Oh really, no kidding. So
37:18
Speaker 1: so why that raises the next question? If we have
37:22
Speaker 1: all the best intentions and we want to fill in
37:26
Speaker 1: the blanks, stop smoking, exercise, uh, lose weight, whatever it is,
37:32
Speaker 1: why is it that when we make these sorts of plans,
37:35
Speaker 1: all as a group on the same date every year,
37:37
Speaker 1: I can't imagine why would that not work? Well, it
37:40
Speaker 1: doesn't work because the world is waiting for us in
37:45
Speaker 1: some sense. It does have those unknown unknowns, and it
37:47
Speaker 1: does have external forces that are going to defeat us.
37:50
Speaker 1: And what we tend to do is we tend to
37:52
Speaker 1: focus on our plans. What am I going to do,
37:56
Speaker 1: What are my intentions, what are the steps that I'm
37:58
Speaker 1: going to take. What we really should do is interview
38:02
Speaker 1: people who tried to do this before and find out
38:04
Speaker 1: what the real difficulties are. They're gonna be many difficulties
38:07
Speaker 1: that we haven't anticipated they're gonna be many difficulties that
38:09
Speaker 1: we don't know about. Um. Uh. And not only that,
38:14
Speaker 1: there are probably tricks, strategies to tactics, plans that we
38:17
Speaker 1: can make that we wouldn't think of, but someone else
38:20
Speaker 1: has thought of them and they actually work. So if
38:22
Speaker 1: we actually consulted with people who have traveled the road
38:26
Speaker 1: before us, we would do a much better job, I think,
38:28
Speaker 1: anticipating the difficulties we have lined ahead, as well as
38:33
Speaker 1: being better armed with strategies that have a better chance
38:36
Speaker 1: of success. All right, so let me push back on
38:39
Speaker 1: that a little bit. The dieting industry is like a
38:41
Speaker 1: twenty six billion dollar sector of the economy, and they
38:45
Speaker 1: all have the magic UM bullet, and yet everybody in
38:50
Speaker 1: this country seems to be increasingly overweight. Um. Diabetes is
38:55
Speaker 1: a problem. There are all these weight related issues. If
38:58
Speaker 1: we could speak to other people well and have that
39:01
Speaker 1: conversation who have been successful, how does that work given
39:06
Speaker 1: the vast numbers of people, um who need assistance losing weight? Uh.
39:11
Speaker 1: That's a very good question, by the way. Evolutionarily, this
39:14
Speaker 1: is a very novel task for because having extra weight
39:18
Speaker 1: is a good survival thing. If you have a shorter lifespan.
39:22
Speaker 1: We now live beyond that adaptation. I don't think cholesterol
39:26
Speaker 1: was a big problem ten years ago. I think that's right,
39:29
Speaker 1: and it probably wasn't a big problem even up to
39:31
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago. I mean, getting calories was up
39:34
Speaker 1: to very very recently. So as a species, we are
39:37
Speaker 1: dealing with a very novel task in trying to lose weight.
39:42
Speaker 1: I think that there are some common sense things that
39:47
Speaker 1: people can do, um. But one of the things they
39:50
Speaker 1: can do is reset two things. The first is what's
39:55
Speaker 1: a realistic outcome in terms of losing weight? But also
40:00
Speaker 1: so um having more realism in terms of how much
40:03
Speaker 1: effort uh and how much time it is going to
40:06
Speaker 1: take to get there, for example, uh, and also being
40:09
Speaker 1: to think things more in terms of long term as
40:10
Speaker 1: opposed to the short term. I mean a lot of
40:12
Speaker 1: people think, how do I lose weight this month? No,
40:14
Speaker 1: the question is how do you keep the weight? How
40:16
Speaker 1: do you lose weight and keep the weight off for
40:17
Speaker 1: years and years and years um. But I think as
40:21
Speaker 1: certainly as a society, I think it's taking a while
40:24
Speaker 1: for the collective wisdom to form because it does turn
40:27
Speaker 1: out to be a particularly difficult task. So my I
40:30
Speaker 1: go for an annual physical every year. My GP is
40:33
Speaker 1: also a cardiologist, and he's one of these old school doctors.
40:36
Speaker 1: When they're done with the tests, you go into their office,
40:39
Speaker 1: you sit down and you have a conversation and when
40:41
Speaker 1: you go through everything, it's all good. And he says,
40:44
Speaker 1: you have any questions for me? I'm like, yeah, I'd
40:46
Speaker 1: like to drop a few pounds. What do you suggests?
40:49
Speaker 1: And he very conspiratorially looked over each shoulder and then
40:54
Speaker 1: lean forward and whispered to me, eat less food. And UM,
40:58
Speaker 1: I'm like, Doc, you know this a giant industry whose
41:01
Speaker 1: whole purpose is to not share that advice, but it
41:05
Speaker 1: turns out to be good advice. Yes, so eating a
41:08
Speaker 1: little less food you can lose some weight. It's it's um,
41:12
Speaker 1: it's quite fascinating, and yet it's hard to do than
41:15
Speaker 1: you would imagine. Then I certainly, then I imagine, No,
41:19
Speaker 1: I think that's right. Well, certainly in the United States
41:20
Speaker 1: it's harder. Um. One of think that I think is interesting.
41:23
Speaker 1: Now this isn't psychologist, it's just my personal life is
41:25
Speaker 1: every so often I spend time in Germany and I
41:29
Speaker 1: always lose weight in Germany. Without even trying. Now, why
41:33
Speaker 1: is that? Do you not like bratt worstern beer or uh? Well,
41:37
Speaker 1: German cuisine is more than that, not much more, by
41:39
Speaker 1: the way, but it is more than that. But uh
41:43
Speaker 1: it's a lot of schnitzel when you don't know anything else.
41:46
Speaker 1: That's a safe choice. It's a safe choice. But I
41:49
Speaker 1: think most uh, well, in Germany the portions are small.
41:54
Speaker 1: In the rest of the world, the portions are small.
41:56
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and that's an issue. Most of the
41:59
Speaker 1: calories in the meal are conveyed by the sauce, in
42:02
Speaker 1: the in the inevitable beer you're going to drink, or
42:05
Speaker 1: the wine you're going to drink. But there's also just
42:07
Speaker 1: a much more walking. Oh really, bike riding? Yeah, but
42:10
Speaker 1: can you walk off that many calories? I mean, if
42:13
Speaker 1: you're Michael Phelps, sure, But for the rest of us,
42:17
Speaker 1: we're not putting in three hours a day of sweating. Well,
42:20
Speaker 1: that's certainly true. But if you just walk, and walking
42:24
Speaker 1: is one physical act our species was built for, h
42:27
Speaker 1: it does bring things under control. Um, this isn't scientific.
42:31
Speaker 1: I just know my brother lost quite a bit of
42:33
Speaker 1: weight by buying a beagle and then taking the beagle
42:37
Speaker 1: out for eight to nine mile walks every weekend and UH.
42:42
Speaker 1: That worked for him. UH. And so there are strategies
42:45
Speaker 1: that work. Maybe different strategies work for different people. UM.
42:49
Speaker 1: But the key is often UM. What we will tend
42:53
Speaker 1: to do is will tend to try to solve the
42:55
Speaker 1: question ourselves, using only ourselves as the source of knowledge.
43:00
Speaker 1: It's good to consult, It's good to find out who's
43:03
Speaker 1: had a success. It's good to confer with other people.
43:06
Speaker 1: That can only broaden the knowledge and the wisdom that
43:10
Speaker 1: we have UM at our disposal whenever we have a
43:13
Speaker 1: difficult task like losing weight. And I gotta ask why
43:16
Speaker 1: you In Germany each year I have a collaboration there
43:19
Speaker 1: in Cologne with a couple of researchers doing work on trust.
43:23
Speaker 1: This is where the interest in norms comes in. UH.
43:26
Speaker 1: And that's been going on for many, many years. And
43:29
Speaker 1: there have been many many meals during the course of
43:34
Speaker 1: that collaboration, and much weight has been lost funding over there. Interesting.
43:38
Speaker 1: I have a bunch more questions, including some on trust.
43:41
Speaker 1: Can you stick around a few surements? We have been
43:43
Speaker 1: speaking with David Dunning, professor of psychology at the University
43:48
Speaker 1: of Michigan. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure
43:51
Speaker 1: and stick around and check out our podcast Astras, where
43:54
Speaker 1: we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things
43:57
Speaker 1: psychology related. You can find in that on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher,
44:03
Speaker 1: wherever your final podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
44:07
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
44:11
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my weekly column on
44:14
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Follow me on Twitter at
44:18
Speaker 1: Rid Halts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Master some
44:22
Speaker 1: Business on Bloomberg Radio Professor Donny. I don't even know
44:27
Speaker 1: what to call you, David. Thank you so much for
44:29
Speaker 1: doing this. I have been looking forward to this for
44:32
Speaker 1: a long time. And there I have all these formal
44:34
Speaker 1: questions and we kind of work our way through that
44:36
Speaker 1: that's my crutch. But I have all these other questions
44:40
Speaker 1: that that I've been dying to ask you, and and
44:43
Speaker 1: the big one was on that chart which you surprised
44:47
Speaker 1: me with. I didn't realize you guys had hadn't created
44:51
Speaker 1: that and that only in did you end up validating
44:55
Speaker 1: with the Internet intuitive about your work. So that's fast
44:59
Speaker 1: and nating the thing that intrigues me so much. Why
45:06
Speaker 1: why is it that the way we learn is to
45:11
Speaker 1: start from zero, assume we have knowledge that we don't
45:17
Speaker 1: and then build on that, and all of a sudden
45:21
Speaker 1: there's an insight and we realize, oh, we are idiots,
45:25
Speaker 1: we don't know half of what we're talking about. And
45:28
Speaker 1: from from that broken down position, are we able to
45:33
Speaker 1: rebuild some true confidence relative to skills versus the false confidence?
45:39
Speaker 1: And so the big question is what is it about
45:42
Speaker 1: the species that has this inherit in it? Because it
45:46
Speaker 1: seems to cause wide spread problems across society. Well, two things.
45:52
Speaker 1: I mean, let me start off with the things we
45:54
Speaker 1: we don't pay attention to. We don't pay attention to
45:57
Speaker 1: what we don't know. We've already talked about that. And
45:59
Speaker 1: we also do pay attention to luck and its potential
46:02
Speaker 1: role success and failure, uh, for example, So we set
46:05
Speaker 1: that aside. Um. Where this comes from in terms of
46:09
Speaker 1: we think we've got this is that actually, in many
46:13
Speaker 1: situations we start from zero and we do get it.
46:17
Speaker 1: That is um. Uh, every situation we face in one
46:21
Speaker 1: way or another. This interview, for example, is a new situation.
46:24
Speaker 1: It does it doesn't exactly replicate the past. It's unique,
46:28
Speaker 1: and our brain is able to fetch a lot of
46:31
Speaker 1: little elements of knowledge from everywhere to figure out, Okay,
46:34
Speaker 1: what is this, how do I deal with this? What's
46:35
Speaker 1: the next move? I mean, the genius of our brain
46:37
Speaker 1: is taking something novel and coming to an understanding of it.
46:40
Speaker 1: This is similar enough to that that I could use
46:43
Speaker 1: what I learned last time to work my way through.
46:46
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, and that's essential for the species to survive.
46:50
Speaker 1: But sometimes you know that skill is going to derail,
46:53
Speaker 1: it's going to lead us to something that's absolutely wrong. Uh.
46:57
Speaker 1: But it will look exactly right. That is, it will
46:59
Speaker 1: look like all the experiences where it was novel. We
47:01
Speaker 1: figured out what was going on, We figured out what
47:04
Speaker 1: we should do. So for example, if you have a
47:07
Speaker 1: friend who's drowning in the lake, you're on the dock
47:09
Speaker 1: and next and you don't have life reservers, but you
47:12
Speaker 1: do have a basketball and a bowling ball next to you.
47:14
Speaker 1: You know which ball to throw them, depending on how
47:18
Speaker 1: much you like him exactly. Um. We we can innovate. Uh,
47:22
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's what we were built to do. The
47:27
Speaker 1: problem is those innovations may become misapplied. And that's where
47:31
Speaker 1: the Dunning Krueger effect comes in. We've um worked from
47:34
Speaker 1: this genius, we've worked from this amazing database we have
47:38
Speaker 1: in our squishy little organic driver in our server in
47:42
Speaker 1: our head and um, but we've misapplied and we don't
47:47
Speaker 1: realize that until well after the disaster has happened, So
47:51
Speaker 1: we're not aware of. What we don't know are blind
47:53
Speaker 1: spots where we underestimate luck. And I've seen some ridings
47:59
Speaker 1: that's a when we're successful, we credited to our own
48:03
Speaker 1: skill and when we're unsuccessful, we credited to bad luck.
48:07
Speaker 1: And not only that, but with the we do the
48:09
Speaker 1: opposite with other people when they're successful while they got lucky,
48:13
Speaker 1: and when they're unsuccessful it's because they're not very skillful.
48:17
Speaker 1: That sort of back to the I'm special thing that
48:21
Speaker 1: seems to permeate everything, doesn't it It does, and that
48:24
Speaker 1: it's exactly the I'm special thing. But one thing I
48:27
Speaker 1: should mention though, is the I'm special thing, though might
48:30
Speaker 1: be constrained in other parts of the globe, is still
48:33
Speaker 1: could be cultural. Oh there's a cultural element, no doubt.
48:36
Speaker 1: We've actually studied that that this is something that attaches
48:39
Speaker 1: much more to people with a heritage it's American as Canadian,
48:42
Speaker 1: that's Western European. If you're coming from uh an Eastern culture, Uh,
48:48
Speaker 1: you don't do um as much or at all, this
48:52
Speaker 1: overestimation of self for this I'm special stuff that you'll
48:55
Speaker 1: find Americans do all the time. Huh. And now I
48:58
Speaker 1: would imagine in China, where there's a billion plus people,
49:01
Speaker 1: it's harder to just assume you're special or is that
49:04
Speaker 1: not even relevant? It's cultural more than anything. Well, it's
49:07
Speaker 1: cultural in the sense of is the emphasis on me
49:11
Speaker 1: and what I can do and what can I impose
49:13
Speaker 1: upon the world that's very Western as opposed to how
49:16
Speaker 1: do I fit in? How do I harmonize? How do
49:18
Speaker 1: I fulfill the role that I've been assigned or the
49:22
Speaker 1: role that I've fallen into, and that's much more Eastern.
49:24
Speaker 1: And you're just gonna have a very different way of
49:26
Speaker 1: thinking if you're in the first culture as opposed to
49:28
Speaker 1: second culture. So so you earlier we were talking about
49:32
Speaker 1: trust um and I'm kind of intrigued by that. There
49:36
Speaker 1: there's a question that is, I guess, sort of obvious.
49:40
Speaker 1: Why do we trust strangers? Why are we so susceptible
49:43
Speaker 1: to being defrauded or scammed. It seems that every other
49:47
Speaker 1: day I'm reading about some different Ponzi scheme or some
49:51
Speaker 1: different um insanity where people trusted someone they clearly shouldn't
49:57
Speaker 1: and it got them into a lot of trouble. I
50:00
Speaker 1: think that comes from the fact we took what we
50:02
Speaker 1: talked about norms earlier. And one of the norms we
50:06
Speaker 1: have that goes right down deep in the heart of
50:09
Speaker 1: what it means to have a conversation is we assume
50:11
Speaker 1: what the other person is telling us is true unless
50:14
Speaker 1: there is evidence otherwise. But the assumption is truth. That's
50:17
Speaker 1: the presumption that we have, and that makes sense. Imagine
50:20
Speaker 1: a world in which I are we all distrusted what
50:23
Speaker 1: the other person is telling us, there would not be
50:26
Speaker 1: much coordination going on in the world. Um. So, if
50:29
Speaker 1: you ask for directions, the person tells you how to
50:30
Speaker 1: get to the Bloomberg building, you assume they're telling you
50:33
Speaker 1: the truth, because imagine if you said, no, I don't
50:36
Speaker 1: trust them, what are you gonna do? So do you
50:39
Speaker 1: even ask them in the first place? Exactly, So, there
50:42
Speaker 1: is a normal presumption of truth. Uh. That serves us
50:46
Speaker 1: well for the most part in life. But um, if
50:49
Speaker 1: the other person is malevolent. If the other person is incompetent,
50:54
Speaker 1: that presumption is going to lead to potential folly, for example.
51:00
Speaker 1: But we we do have actually ongoing work looking at
51:04
Speaker 1: people's ability to tell uh true science headlines from fake
51:09
Speaker 1: science headlines. And what's interesting to us is that, um,
51:15
Speaker 1: uh the error people tend to make is they tend
51:17
Speaker 1: to believe fake things are true. They make that error
51:19
Speaker 1: much more they do the reverse error, thinking a true
51:21
Speaker 1: thing is fake. So in general, people are gullible, so
51:25
Speaker 1: to speak. What's interesting though, is you ask people this
51:29
Speaker 1: is one of the rare areas for people. Uh. They
51:32
Speaker 1: don't say, oh, I have no bias, I see it
51:36
Speaker 1: the way it is. Rather what they they say, they
51:38
Speaker 1: do have a bias. They're too skeptical. Uh, they're too
51:41
Speaker 1: wary of information out there. They're more likely to uh
51:44
Speaker 1: distrust a true thing than to accept a false thing.
51:48
Speaker 1: So this is the first time I've ever seen something
51:50
Speaker 1: a bias with the superpower that is, most people are gullible,
51:53
Speaker 1: but they actually believe they have the reverse bias, that
51:55
Speaker 1: they're too skeptical. But it all comes from uh, from
52:00
Speaker 1: a norm if you will, that for the most part
52:03
Speaker 1: in life, and day to day living. It works. It
52:05
Speaker 1: makes UH life eminently easier if we assume what the
52:09
Speaker 1: other person's telling us is true, because at the very
52:11
Speaker 1: least what the other person is telling us is sincere right.
52:15
Speaker 1: That that's quite interesting. I'm surprised, in this era of
52:19
Speaker 1: misinformation and all the false memes all over the Internet
52:23
Speaker 1: that people still think their problem is Well, I'm too skeptical.
52:27
Speaker 1: It's clear, at least from the popular culture, that we
52:32
Speaker 1: too easily believe things we shouldn't. Oh, that's absolutely right, UH,
52:36
Speaker 1: and I have to admit we don't exactly have a
52:39
Speaker 1: handle on why do people think the reverse? That's fascinating
52:43
Speaker 1: And once again it's one of those UH findings we
52:47
Speaker 1: get where I look at it and I go, I
52:49
Speaker 1: have no idea why this is happening. That happens far
52:51
Speaker 1: too often in my work. So what about nudges? Is
52:55
Speaker 1: there a way to to and I'm referencing uh on
53:00
Speaker 1: Stein and failures UM work on on small, little systemic
53:06
Speaker 1: ways to steer people in the right direction. Is that
53:09
Speaker 1: something that can help people make better decisions? Or are
53:13
Speaker 1: we just left to our own faulty devices. Well, our
53:18
Speaker 1: devices are always going to be somewhat faulty, but we
53:20
Speaker 1: can reduce the fault if you will. We can never
53:22
Speaker 1: be perfect, but we can reduce our vulnerability. And for example,
53:27
Speaker 1: we talked about gullibility. Uh. There are a number of
53:31
Speaker 1: UM resources that are being developed on the Internet even
53:34
Speaker 1: as we speak that are focused on how do we
53:37
Speaker 1: get people to better evaluate what they're hearing over the internet,
53:41
Speaker 1: And just to go over what the key movie is
53:46
Speaker 1: is that typically what people do is when they see
53:48
Speaker 1: something that's a provocative headline, for example, they look at
53:52
Speaker 1: the website and try to figure out, just based on
53:55
Speaker 1: that headline and the website it's designed itself, is this
53:58
Speaker 1: something that I can believe? And so if it has
54:01
Speaker 1: a Stasi professional picture for example, they decide it must
54:04
Speaker 1: be more believable. Um, that's not the way to decide
54:07
Speaker 1: whether or not something that's true or not. Instead of
54:10
Speaker 1: internal reading, what you have to do is something that
54:13
Speaker 1: all fact checkers know, which is you have to do
54:15
Speaker 1: lateral reading. You have to go to other sources. You
54:19
Speaker 1: have to go to other people once again and find
54:23
Speaker 1: out other other sources saying the same thing. Is there
54:26
Speaker 1: any comment on the reliability of the source you're looking
54:29
Speaker 1: at now? From from other places. Uh am I looking
54:32
Speaker 1: at something mainstream or looking at something that's made up. Um,
54:38
Speaker 1: what people have to become is a little bit more
54:40
Speaker 1: like a journalist. And what journalists do and what fact
54:43
Speaker 1: checkers do is they check from multiple sources. They go
54:46
Speaker 1: to other sources to take a look at whether this
54:48
Speaker 1: piece of information is one that I can rely on.
54:52
Speaker 1: And so in terms of nudges, there there are thematic judges, uh,
54:56
Speaker 1: nudges like uh, the lateral reading. Uh. But there are
55:00
Speaker 1: also more specific things now that are popping up on
55:02
Speaker 1: the Internet that can be quite helpful, at least in
55:05
Speaker 1: this on this issue. That's quite intriguing. Although I guess
55:11
Speaker 1: you could do the same thing with the deep fakes
55:13
Speaker 1: that are coming out. Some of the videos are really
55:17
Speaker 1: horrifying because they just look so real. How can you
55:22
Speaker 1: do a lateral check and find out if something like
55:24
Speaker 1: that is real? Well, uh, I actually do this, actually
55:28
Speaker 1: google and see if anybody else has basically said, oh, well,
55:31
Speaker 1: this is a deep fake basically, so uh, you can't
55:35
Speaker 1: tell from from the video itself because you are incredibly good.
55:39
Speaker 1: Now you really have to go to other sources and
55:41
Speaker 1: find out what the other sources are saying so, and
55:44
Speaker 1: often what you find. For example, if you do that,
55:47
Speaker 1: you'll find out this video tape was created by such
55:49
Speaker 1: and such, or this video tape actually comes from some
55:52
Speaker 1: other incident has nothing to do with what's going on here.
55:56
Speaker 1: But basically, uh, in terms of dealing with misinformation, I think,
56:00
Speaker 1: either whether we're talking about students in school, whether we're
56:03
Speaker 1: talking about adults, the thing we have to do is
56:06
Speaker 1: learn a little journalism. By the way, just quick, other
56:10
Speaker 1: countries have actually gone this route in a big way.
56:13
Speaker 1: So Finland, because it's right next to Russia and it's
56:17
Speaker 1: been at a cool war with Russia for the last
56:20
Speaker 1: hundred years, knows that Russian disinformation is coming over. And
56:24
Speaker 1: so they're actually training students and training adults about how
56:29
Speaker 1: to tell fake from real, you know, in an intensive way.
56:32
Speaker 1: Um that, well, we could borrow a few of their techniques.
56:36
Speaker 1: Quite quite interesting. There was something else in the book
56:38
Speaker 1: I had to ask you about. What is anna so
56:43
Speaker 1: nosa and as ignosia. I don't know if I pronounced
56:46
Speaker 1: that right, but neither do I certainly have no I
56:48
Speaker 1: know that I have no idea. If I pronounced that right,
56:51
Speaker 1: I could barely spit it out that's true. But but
56:55
Speaker 1: I have enough to think I know, and I really
56:57
Speaker 1: haven't checked in a while to figure out if I
56:59
Speaker 1: really know how to announced that well. As Egnosia is
57:02
Speaker 1: actually a term that comes from um medicine and has
57:07
Speaker 1: to do with issues where because of brain injury, people
57:13
Speaker 1: are paralyzed but don't know that they're paralyzed. So oh yeah.
57:17
Speaker 1: So for example, if you if a person is paralyzed, um,
57:21
Speaker 1: I believe it's the left arm, and put a cup
57:25
Speaker 1: of water in front of them and say, okay, pick
57:26
Speaker 1: up the cup. Well, the person can't move their arm.
57:29
Speaker 1: They're paralyzed. I can't move their arm. But if you
57:31
Speaker 1: ask the person, whey aren't they picking up the cup,
57:33
Speaker 1: they may say something like I'm not thirsty, why would
57:37
Speaker 1: I want to pick up the cup? That is, they
57:38
Speaker 1: have no awareness. Yeah, sort of like the split brain experiments.
57:42
Speaker 1: Well it's flit brain experts are exactly that, where the
57:46
Speaker 1: one side of the brain can point to the right object,
57:48
Speaker 1: but that's not the side of the brain that controls
57:51
Speaker 1: um uh talking, that controls verbal skills. But if you
57:55
Speaker 1: ask the person why did you point to that, they
57:57
Speaker 1: can come up with something that is that's part of
57:59
Speaker 1: Our brain is very good at interpreting how to understand
58:03
Speaker 1: novel situations, so we can come up with justifications. We
58:06
Speaker 1: can come up with rash now is for why we
58:08
Speaker 1: do what we do quite easily. Our brain is an
58:10
Speaker 1: incredible storyteller, um, But you know, incredible storytellers sometimes tell fiction,
58:16
Speaker 1: and our brain is quite good at coming up with
58:18
Speaker 1: fiction at times. That's quite interesting. I didn't know you
58:22
Speaker 1: were going to go. Where are you going to go with? Um?
58:26
Speaker 1: The idea of of that injury and paralysis, it started
58:31
Speaker 1: to remind me a little bit of the aphasias where
58:34
Speaker 1: people lose the ability to speak but they could sing,
58:38
Speaker 1: or they can't write, but they could still read. And
58:41
Speaker 1: it seems like there's almost a very specific part of
58:44
Speaker 1: the brain that performs very specific functions, and if it's injured,
58:49
Speaker 1: everything else related still works. Just that one skill seems
58:53
Speaker 1: to go away. That's right. But the issue with a
58:55
Speaker 1: lot of physical maladies and our work can be thought
58:59
Speaker 1: of as ataphorical extension of that too intellectual capabilities. A
59:04
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know the physical melodies that they've got,
59:07
Speaker 1: So as people become hard of hearing, they often don't
59:10
Speaker 1: know that they're becoming hard of hearing, and so they
59:12
Speaker 1: wonder why everybody's mumbling. For example, a lot of people
59:16
Speaker 1: who are color blind, I don't know their color blindly
59:19
Speaker 1: because they've never not been color blind. I had no idea.
59:22
Speaker 1: I thought you would order, like, when you look at
59:24
Speaker 1: a stop light, you can see what are people talking about?
59:27
Speaker 1: With red lights and green lights, they all look great
59:29
Speaker 1: at me. Does that not register or is that apparently
59:33
Speaker 1: not because you have you've never experienced fred or you've
59:35
Speaker 1: never experienced green, so you don't know what you're missing.
59:38
Speaker 1: When you mentioned everybody's mumbling. When I turned fifty, I
59:41
Speaker 1: remember having this is absolutely true. Had a conversation with
59:44
Speaker 1: my wife. I was sitting at the breakfast table one
59:47
Speaker 1: Sunday and I said, don't know what's going on with
59:49
Speaker 1: the New York Times, but they're using some cheaper paper.
59:52
Speaker 1: Look how fuzzy the words are. And then I said,
59:56
Speaker 1: look the Wall Street General. It's the same thing. And
59:58
Speaker 1: my wife says it it You need glasses and I'm like, what, No, No,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: I have perfect vision. She hands me her glasses and
1:00:05
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I had no idea. My vision had
1:00:11
Speaker 1: decayed so much at the ripled age of fifty one
1:00:15
Speaker 1: UM some years ago, and it's that exactly the same thing.
1:00:18
Speaker 1: You have no idea that the gradual decay is taking place.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: So so what else are you working on? Your Your
1:00:26
Speaker 1: field of study has very much um evolved since the
1:00:30
Speaker 1: original Dunning Krueger work. What else are you looking at
1:00:33
Speaker 1: these days? A related idea that we've been looking at
1:00:37
Speaker 1: quite a bit is this idea of hypocognition hypo hypo cognition. Uh.
1:00:44
Speaker 1: And the best way to explain it is, if you
1:00:46
Speaker 1: don't know what hypocognition is, congratulations, you've just experienced. Hypo
1:00:51
Speaker 1: Hypocognition is not having a concept if you will, so um,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: not having the idea of unknown unknowns. In the finance,
1:01:00
Speaker 1: a lot of people invest, but they don't really have
1:01:03
Speaker 1: the concept of exponential growth or compound interest. Your compounding
1:01:07
Speaker 1: is most probability and statistical things are very counterintuitive. People
1:01:14
Speaker 1: just can't wrap their head around it. And when you
1:01:16
Speaker 1: show people compounding charts, they're very often incredulous, incredulous that, wait,
1:01:21
Speaker 1: this much money can't I had a whole discussion about
1:01:24
Speaker 1: the number of four oh one k millionaires and the
1:01:28
Speaker 1: person said, well, maybe years ago, but you couldn't do
1:01:30
Speaker 1: that now? Why can't you do that now? It's these
1:01:34
Speaker 1: still got however many years it is, and here's what
1:01:37
Speaker 1: you're expected. Returns are over forty years. Oh and ps,
1:01:41
Speaker 1: your contribution levels are are up. It's easier today than
1:01:45
Speaker 1: it was years ago. That's right. But if you don't
1:01:47
Speaker 1: have the concept what what you are talking about seems alien, foreign,
1:01:51
Speaker 1: or a little bit of a con Uh So, But
1:01:55
Speaker 1: we're studying that in number of ways because we're interested.
1:01:58
Speaker 1: For example, what if people don't have a concept of
1:02:02
Speaker 1: scientific rigor they don't know all the rules that I
1:02:05
Speaker 1: have to live under, for example, to verify or make
1:02:09
Speaker 1: the case for any sort of conclusion that I want
1:02:12
Speaker 1: to reach. And that turns out to be related to uh,
1:02:15
Speaker 1: two perceptions out there in the world. The first perception
1:02:17
Speaker 1: is scientists can say whatever they want. Is that a
1:02:20
Speaker 1: real perception that people really think? Uh? Not a majority,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: but a clear percentage of people believe that. Is that
1:02:28
Speaker 1: specific to this country or is that global that I
1:02:31
Speaker 1: don't know, I've only studied it within this country. Uh.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: And it's also related, by the way to distrusted science
1:02:36
Speaker 1: that you just you don't have to listen to scientists
1:02:39
Speaker 1: what they have to say, really isn't useful? Um, and
1:02:42
Speaker 1: that it all does trace back in part but an
1:02:45
Speaker 1: important part to not knowing that how much work it
1:02:49
Speaker 1: is to reduce a piece of scientific knowledge. You don't
1:02:52
Speaker 1: have the idea of control condition, random assignment. I can
1:02:55
Speaker 1: go on it on, you can't cherry pick. Uh. People
1:02:59
Speaker 1: don't know these rules, and as a consequence, they think
1:03:01
Speaker 1: scientists are just some uh professors in their office dreaming
1:03:06
Speaker 1: up a conclusion and then collecting some data to window
1:03:09
Speaker 1: dress it, for example. And yet we use technology to
1:03:13
Speaker 1: such a great deal. Do do people think these are like, oh,
1:03:16
Speaker 1: look a magic box that I can speak to people
1:03:18
Speaker 1: on it's magic? Do they not get technology and engineering
1:03:22
Speaker 1: is based on fundamental science? I mean that seems pretty obvious.
1:03:27
Speaker 1: If science doesn't work, then how could you fly on
1:03:30
Speaker 1: a plane, How could you take medicine? How could you
1:03:33
Speaker 1: use you know, there's we get into an elevator at
1:03:36
Speaker 1: least in cities every day. Is it a magic box
1:03:40
Speaker 1: or is there science behind it? It just it seems
1:03:42
Speaker 1: so hard to accept that people are really science skeptical.
1:03:47
Speaker 1: I well, I agree, but I assure you that that
1:03:50
Speaker 1: percentage of people does exist. How what percentage of people
1:03:54
Speaker 1: that you study are truly science skeptics. Well, we're not
1:03:58
Speaker 1: using representative samples, but in the same calls we get
1:04:00
Speaker 1: and they're actually a better educated than than the average American.
1:04:03
Speaker 1: It's about let's say, I, but I can't I I
1:04:07
Speaker 1: don't know what the real percentage is because I haven't
1:04:08
Speaker 1: done anything that's a good representative snapshot, let's say in
1:04:12
Speaker 1: the United States. But you have to understand that a
1:04:15
Speaker 1: lot of people, I mean, the ignorance of the scientific
1:04:19
Speaker 1: method runs so deep that a lot of people don't
1:04:21
Speaker 1: understand that scientists collect data. They don't understand that that's so,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: that's the that's the process, and that data have the
1:04:30
Speaker 1: final authority and what you're able to conclude and what
1:04:32
Speaker 1: you're able to say, it just doesn't appear to them.
1:04:35
Speaker 1: So if you ask um students, let's say in college,
1:04:38
Speaker 1: are in high school, do they believe in oxygen or
1:04:41
Speaker 1: do they believe in the in the electron? They'll go yes, yes,
1:04:45
Speaker 1: why And they don't cite an experiment, they don't cite data. Uh,
1:04:49
Speaker 1: they basically say, that's what everybody says, that's what my
1:04:51
Speaker 1: teacher says, that's what my parents say. So for a
1:04:55
Speaker 1: lot of people, Um, the idea of data is not
1:04:58
Speaker 1: what they think about. They're basing their beliefs and what
1:05:01
Speaker 1: other people say, by the way, which is the same
1:05:02
Speaker 1: basis they use to believe in things like reincarnation or
1:05:06
Speaker 1: ghosts or karma. That is the basis for people's scientific
1:05:11
Speaker 1: beliefs tends to be the same as the basis of
1:05:14
Speaker 1: their supernatural beliefs. So it's just whatever the societal consensus is.
1:05:19
Speaker 1: They're acceptance. It's social proof, that's exactly. And and you
1:05:23
Speaker 1: know the one clapp question before I get to my
1:05:25
Speaker 1: favorite question. One thing I wanted to ask you earlier
1:05:29
Speaker 1: but for didn't get to was was comes back to
1:05:35
Speaker 1: paper blowing up and becoming so popular. After that happens,
1:05:41
Speaker 1: how did that affect your subsequent research? Did it affect
1:05:44
Speaker 1: the topics you pick? That did affect the options you
1:05:47
Speaker 1: had available? Like, what did what did this paper blowing
1:05:51
Speaker 1: up due to your subsequent research? Well, for many years,
1:05:55
Speaker 1: it didn't do anything because it was known, but the
1:06:00
Speaker 1: Internet wasn't fully in place yet, it wasn't a thing yet.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: I think that's happened far much more recently. So I
1:06:06
Speaker 1: went off and studied whatever I studied, But then the
1:06:09
Speaker 1: world sort of told me, no, we want you to
1:06:11
Speaker 1: look at this. Uh. And that's okay, because this was
1:06:16
Speaker 1: always the paper I didn't know how to follow up. Yes, Uh,
1:06:20
Speaker 1: so you have follow up. What else came out of
1:06:23
Speaker 1: this paper? Oh? A number of things have come out
1:06:25
Speaker 1: of this paper. So the question is when are people
1:06:27
Speaker 1: most vulnerable the Dunning Kruger effect? Um? Uh? And the
1:06:31
Speaker 1: answer is when they have an answer, when they believe
1:06:33
Speaker 1: they have expertise or they can spin a yard if
1:06:37
Speaker 1: you will. I mean there are times when you just
1:06:39
Speaker 1: simply cannot come up with an answer and you know
1:06:41
Speaker 1: that you don't know. Uh, you know when you're guessing.
1:06:44
Speaker 1: And that's some recent work uh we now have under review.
1:06:48
Speaker 1: It shows that people know when they're guessing. The problem
1:06:50
Speaker 1: the Dunning Kruger effect is when you don't think you're guessing, um,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: and coming up with a wrong answer. Uh. It's led
1:06:57
Speaker 1: to this work on hypocognition. It's led to this work
1:07:00
Speaker 1: on gullibility. We're now looking at do people know when
1:07:06
Speaker 1: they really need to ask for advice? That's an important consequence.
1:07:10
Speaker 1: But a lot of these questions really weren't formed in
1:07:13
Speaker 1: my head until I started interacting with people like you,
1:07:16
Speaker 1: or reporters or people in the airport, for example, are
1:07:20
Speaker 1: people randomly stopping you to ask Dunning Krueger questions? Well,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: it has happened. I mean, there's no escaping the baggage carousel.
1:07:28
Speaker 1: You're a prisoner over there? Well no, well, uh, luckily
1:07:32
Speaker 1: no one can see my little label on the on
1:07:34
Speaker 1: the luggage. But if my name gets called, you know,
1:07:37
Speaker 1: to get a seat assignment or whatever something like that,
1:07:40
Speaker 1: occasionally prison come over and say, are are you that Dunning?
1:07:43
Speaker 1: I gonna go this is wild? Um. So it's had
1:07:46
Speaker 1: that impact. Um. But but basically, I'm in, let's say,
1:07:53
Speaker 1: the last act of my research career, and the world
1:07:56
Speaker 1: has told me this is what it wants me to
1:07:57
Speaker 1: look at. So we're I'm now really asking the question, Uh,
1:08:03
Speaker 1: do do people really not know what they don't know?
1:08:05
Speaker 1: And what implications does that have? Quite fascinating? When when
1:08:09
Speaker 1: is that research coming out hopefully soon to a journal
1:08:12
Speaker 1: and eventually a book near you? Excellent? Alright, so um,
1:08:16
Speaker 1: let me jump to my favorite questions that we ask
1:08:20
Speaker 1: all of our guests. Feel free to go as long
1:08:22
Speaker 1: and short as you like with this, um, and these
1:08:25
Speaker 1: are really designed to be telling us to who you are,
1:08:28
Speaker 1: because we may not know who you are. Um, what
1:08:30
Speaker 1: was the first car you ever owned? Year, make and model?
1:08:34
Speaker 1: The first car I owned was a nineteen seventies six
1:08:37
Speaker 1: Ford Pinto. It was a Mint Julip green Ford Pinto.
1:08:41
Speaker 1: So if anybody is interested, you should google Mint Julip
1:08:45
Speaker 1: green Forward Pinto and you will see pictures of a
1:08:48
Speaker 1: color that exists nowhere else on this world. Yeah, that
1:08:51
Speaker 1: that is insult to injury, a terrible car in an
1:08:54
Speaker 1: awful color. Oh, and that this car was the epitome
1:08:57
Speaker 1: of all of that. So um so a little more
1:09:00
Speaker 1: interesting question. What what are you streaming or listening to
1:09:04
Speaker 1: or or watching these days? Uh? Well, in terms of streaming,
1:09:10
Speaker 1: my taste these days run to um uh, let's say
1:09:15
Speaker 1: intellectual fantasy series like Watchman or West World is about
1:09:21
Speaker 1: to come on Star Trek the Card for example. Uh.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: In terms of streaming music, well, I I'm a BBC
1:09:30
Speaker 1: two excuse me, a BBC six CBC two kind of guy.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: I'm listening to a lot of Canadian pop music at
1:09:37
Speaker 1: the moment. Okay, I was going to say, what is
1:09:39
Speaker 1: BBC six. BBC six is basically British pop music. British
1:09:44
Speaker 1: like great pop from the seventies or Maurice. No, it's contemporary,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: it's more alternative, if you will. But I find what's
1:09:49
Speaker 1: going on in Britain and Canada will be more interesting
1:09:51
Speaker 1: than what's going on in the United States in terms
1:09:54
Speaker 1: of pop. I've been listening to Bob Harris on BBC
1:09:56
Speaker 1: for forever and I love the sort of he covers old,
1:10:00
Speaker 1: old genres in decades, always an interesting and that's exactly
1:10:03
Speaker 1: what these two channels and the Yeah, that's that's very interesting.
1:10:08
Speaker 1: Um and if you like Watchman, I just had this
1:10:10
Speaker 1: conversation yesterday. Have you seen on Amazon Prime The Boys? All? Right?
1:10:16
Speaker 1: So really, very quickly, it's a sort of anti superhero
1:10:22
Speaker 1: world where all the superheroes are these corporate owned entities
1:10:30
Speaker 1: and there turn out to really not be as saving
1:10:35
Speaker 1: society as they appear to be, so much as earning
1:10:39
Speaker 1: a corporate buck. And it's really quite fascinating if you're
1:10:42
Speaker 1: at all interested in Watchman is not quite but there
1:10:46
Speaker 1: are some parallels there that the It was really fascinating.
1:10:52
Speaker 1: It's a little grizzly parts of it, but it's cartoonish,
1:10:55
Speaker 1: so it's not real volume. It's not real violence. It's
1:10:58
Speaker 1: cartoon violence, although you know it can get a little glorious,
1:11:02
Speaker 1: but it's having an contemporary theme y storry imagining, you know,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: this sort of genre in light of contemporary themes, that
1:11:08
Speaker 1: would be very interesting. Yeah, exactly. Um, so what's the
1:11:11
Speaker 1: most important thing that people don't know about David Dunnet?
1:11:15
Speaker 1: M hmm, interesting question. Uh Well, originally, when I was
1:11:19
Speaker 1: a kid, I first wanted to be a cartoonist and
1:11:22
Speaker 1: then a screenwriter. In fact, when I was thirteen, I
1:11:26
Speaker 1: actually submitted a spec script to the TV show Mash.
1:11:31
Speaker 1: It was rejected, but I had in my hand. I've
1:11:33
Speaker 1: since lost it and I uh regret regret losing them.
1:11:37
Speaker 1: I had little handwritten notes from Larry Gilbart, the producer
1:11:39
Speaker 1: of the show, who was then and now a hero
1:11:42
Speaker 1: of mine. So yeah, he's an interesting guy. Who were
1:11:45
Speaker 1: some of your early mentors? What psychologists influenced your approach
1:11:50
Speaker 1: to what you do? I would have to say I
1:11:52
Speaker 1: had a great set of mentor as both as an
1:11:54
Speaker 1: undergraduate and as a graduated undergraduate. Uh, Michigan State professors
1:11:59
Speaker 1: of Larry Missy and Joel Arnov were very influential. Uh.
1:12:03
Speaker 1: Then I went to Stanford and I was a Lee
1:12:05
Speaker 1: raw student. Uh and uh, Michigan State taught me rigor
1:12:10
Speaker 1: um Stanford and Lee taught me humanity, how to put
1:12:13
Speaker 1: humanity into the work, make it an interesting human story.
1:12:16
Speaker 1: But I don't think anybody who was around everybody who
1:12:20
Speaker 1: was around Amos Tversky thinks of him as an influence
1:12:23
Speaker 1: because of you want to know what smart looks like.
1:12:27
Speaker 1: Amos was smart, and this is often something I tell undergraduates.
1:12:31
Speaker 1: UM pick a professor who everybody says it's the smartest,
1:12:34
Speaker 1: because you need to see what smart looks like. That
1:12:36
Speaker 1: will be the content doesn't matter. You want to see
1:12:39
Speaker 1: what smart looks like. Uh So Uh, Amos divers Key
1:12:44
Speaker 1: um Phoebel's worth uh were tremendous influences and basically how
1:12:49
Speaker 1: I spend my day quite quite interesting. Uh. Tell us
1:12:53
Speaker 1: about some of your favorite books. What are you reading
1:12:55
Speaker 1: these days? What do you like? Well? The problem with
1:12:58
Speaker 1: the books I read now is they're all related to
1:13:00
Speaker 1: my work, and reading is a little bit tough because
1:13:04
Speaker 1: I do it for the job so much. Um but
1:13:08
Speaker 1: uh So, Actually, what I've been doing is going back
1:13:11
Speaker 1: to classics from my youth. So the book form of
1:13:15
Speaker 1: swing to Cambodia something I recently read, and I'm trying
1:13:19
Speaker 1: to find girl Escherbach. I can't believe you. You're bringing
1:13:22
Speaker 1: up some of my old time classics. There you go, Well,
1:13:25
Speaker 1: I want to go back now that I'm older, And
1:13:27
Speaker 1: what do I think of them now? For example? Is
1:13:30
Speaker 1: the way to think about it? But Um, a lot
1:13:32
Speaker 1: of what I do is I just read long form
1:13:35
Speaker 1: on the web. So every morning I get the ritzults reads.
1:13:39
Speaker 1: And do you find them interesting? Because I really sift
1:13:43
Speaker 1: through a ton of stuff to find ten really interesting
1:13:46
Speaker 1: things you're sifting. At least to me, it works very
1:13:50
Speaker 1: well if you will, because I find great things to read.
1:13:53
Speaker 1: The thing that I have to do is discipline myself
1:13:56
Speaker 1: not to tweet o the readings you're suggesting, because then
1:13:59
Speaker 1: I'd just be ripping you feel free, Listen. I'm just
1:14:02
Speaker 1: putting together a list of except for Tuesdays where it's
1:14:05
Speaker 1: fifteen instead of ten. I don't know where to for
1:14:07
Speaker 1: Tuesday came from, but somehow that's become I am, um
1:14:12
Speaker 1: a creature of habit, and I've learned that if I
1:14:15
Speaker 1: want to do do something, if I can turn it
1:14:18
Speaker 1: into a habit, I can make it repetitive, and it's
1:14:21
Speaker 1: really just once you start doing something for a month
1:14:24
Speaker 1: or two, it becomes ingrained. Forget a decade or two.
1:14:28
Speaker 1: That's a whole different thing. And that The Reads began
1:14:33
Speaker 1: as a way of just being organized. There's so much
1:14:35
Speaker 1: stuff to read. Let me eliminate all the junk and
1:14:38
Speaker 1: let me see what's left that that's good. People don't
1:14:43
Speaker 1: realize this is really a golden age of journalism writing.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: I used to go through the process of the morning
1:14:49
Speaker 1: of figuring out what's relevant and what do I want
1:14:52
Speaker 1: to read? That sort of concept of creation by extreme prejudice,
1:14:59
Speaker 1: by by saying, if this isn't well done and well
1:15:04
Speaker 1: researched and well written and on a topic that's interesting,
1:15:07
Speaker 1: I can't be bothered with it. Because everything is so
1:15:10
Speaker 1: ephemeral and superficial. Lead to I used to do that manually,
1:15:15
Speaker 1: used to print it out. This is a hundred years ago,
1:15:18
Speaker 1: and someone said, hey, could you just give me a
1:15:20
Speaker 1: list of what you're reading instead of a hard copy?
1:15:23
Speaker 1: And okay, And that eventually became that eventually became the
1:15:28
Speaker 1: Morning Reads. And I think I've been doing that for
1:15:31
Speaker 1: like twenty years or so. It's it's I'm at the
1:15:35
Speaker 1: point now where I could be a sentence or two
1:15:37
Speaker 1: into a peace and I'm like, nope, Like I could
1:15:40
Speaker 1: tell immediately if something is is good or bad. Um,
1:15:44
Speaker 1: so you're not reading a whole lot of books in
1:15:46
Speaker 1: other wise, No, basically because I do so much treating
1:15:50
Speaker 1: that I prefer shorter, punch eier things. Uh. And you're
1:15:54
Speaker 1: absolutely right. There's so much terrific information, some terrific blogs
1:15:57
Speaker 1: on the web, for example, that I can give it
1:15:59
Speaker 1: in that give us some some blog names. The blog
1:16:02
Speaker 1: name I would point out actually is a blog called
1:16:04
Speaker 1: Stumbling and Mumbling. Oh sure, I remember that from that
1:16:07
Speaker 1: became big about ten twelve, fifteen years. Well, it still
1:16:11
Speaker 1: goes on, and I find the the blogger to be
1:16:16
Speaker 1: extremely persuasive. It's about England, so it's not about the
1:16:19
Speaker 1: Knights State. Uh. So that's good. And um often has
1:16:24
Speaker 1: some insights I would dearly love to steal. Um. But
1:16:28
Speaker 1: but that one I find to be quite good. In
1:16:31
Speaker 1: terms of political commentary. The blog Progress Pond I find
1:16:36
Speaker 1: to be extremely interesting familiar. Um. But well it's a
1:16:41
Speaker 1: it's a democratic activist, if you will. But he's rather
1:16:45
Speaker 1: clear eyed. Um. He does stand off from the sermon
1:16:49
Speaker 1: drum of the day to really try to figure out
1:16:51
Speaker 1: what's going on, or to project what's going on a
1:16:54
Speaker 1: Bernie bro not, in fact, he is not a Bernie
1:16:57
Speaker 1: bro That's absolutely clear. It's by the time this broadcast
1:17:00
Speaker 1: we will already have had the Super Tuesday results, we
1:17:04
Speaker 1: will be pretty deep into um the primary season. We
1:17:10
Speaker 1: may even have a nominee by then. That that will
1:17:13
Speaker 1: be kind of kind of interesting. Do you when you
1:17:16
Speaker 1: look at politics, do you ever find yourself with opinions
1:17:19
Speaker 1: and then catch yourself saying self saying, I have no
1:17:22
Speaker 1: expertise in this, this is just my own opinion. Are
1:17:25
Speaker 1: you self aware of your own Dunning Krueger? Well, in politics?
1:17:30
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. Whenever I pronounced something in politics, I usually
1:17:34
Speaker 1: uh precade it or or or preamble it with well,
1:17:36
Speaker 1: this is for entertainment value only, but quite interesting. Um,
1:17:41
Speaker 1: tell us about a time you failed and what you
1:17:43
Speaker 1: learned from the experience. Uh well, um, a chronic failure
1:17:48
Speaker 1: I had. Ultimately it was successful or the project was successful,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: but it took fifteen years. Was this work on trust?
1:17:56
Speaker 1: Where basically the finding is is that people trust complete strangers,
1:18:01
Speaker 1: even though economics tells us they shouldn't, because why would
1:18:05
Speaker 1: a person ever honor your trust their complete stranger. But
1:18:08
Speaker 1: people do trust UH, and our civilization profits because of that.
1:18:13
Speaker 1: And I looked at that, I said, Okay, clearly the
1:18:15
Speaker 1: economics is failing. Clearly two years and and a psychological
1:18:19
Speaker 1: team will be able to figure this out. So I
1:18:21
Speaker 1: tried hypothesis after hypothesis after hypothesis and ran hundreds and
1:18:25
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of subjects. All my hypotheses um failed.
1:18:29
Speaker 1: They often failed in interesting ways, they failed in ways
1:18:32
Speaker 1: that cohered with one another, but for the life I
1:18:34
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out what was going on. That ultimately led
1:18:36
Speaker 1: to this emphasis on norms and the norm of respect
1:18:40
Speaker 1: and politeness with other people. We trust other people, um,
1:18:43
Speaker 1: because we have to respect them, and to distrust them
1:18:46
Speaker 1: is to disrespect them. That took fifteen years in the
1:18:49
Speaker 1: making to get to. What I learned from that, though,
1:18:53
Speaker 1: is I learned that there can be rules of human nature,
1:18:58
Speaker 1: but they can be so deep that none of our
1:19:00
Speaker 1: subjects knew what was going on. People could never explain it.
1:19:04
Speaker 1: And I'm the professional, and I couldn't explain it. Some
1:19:07
Speaker 1: things can run that deep. So that's what I learned.
1:19:10
Speaker 1: But that was fifteen years of failed data which I
1:19:15
Speaker 1: could only bear because of the good graces of tenure. Huh.
1:19:19
Speaker 1: That's really interesting that there's a book that comes it's
1:19:24
Speaker 1: sort of related to the normative issue and and the
1:19:28
Speaker 1: trust issue. And there's a whole bunch of cognitive other
1:19:30
Speaker 1: things by a Will Shure Store called The Heretics Adventures
1:19:36
Speaker 1: with the Enemies of Science. So usually I'm not familiar
1:19:38
Speaker 1: with it. So he is a journalist who embeds himself
1:19:44
Speaker 1: with all sorts of groups that you would otherwise think
1:19:48
Speaker 1: of as wacky, extreme crazy, and whether it's Clad Arthur's
1:19:54
Speaker 1: or science deniers or climate change, it's one group after
1:19:58
Speaker 1: another that's very elevant to the science and Nile issue.
1:20:03
Speaker 1: And his sort of thesis is these people aren't dead
1:20:08
Speaker 1: or evil or dumb. There's something fundamentally wrong with their
1:20:13
Speaker 1: basic model of the world. And once that building block
1:20:17
Speaker 1: is set, you know, it's like aiming for the moon.
1:20:20
Speaker 1: If you're off just a little bit an inch or two, here,
1:20:22
Speaker 1: you're off by millions of miles as you whiz by.
1:20:25
Speaker 1: When they're fundamental model of the universe is off, everything
1:20:30
Speaker 1: constructed on top of that just takes them in these
1:20:33
Speaker 1: crazy directions and it's not Hey, these aren't necessary. Some
1:20:37
Speaker 1: of these are evil people, but that's not necessarily how
1:20:41
Speaker 1: they went so far astray. It's a fundamental, fundamental error
1:20:46
Speaker 1: that just keeps compounding. And uh, it's quite fascinating. It's
1:20:50
Speaker 1: it's really an interesting book. If you've never if you've
1:20:53
Speaker 1: if you've never seen it before. Um So what do
1:20:57
Speaker 1: you do for fun? What do you do when you're
1:20:59
Speaker 1: not read in academic research papers? Well, I'm older, so
1:21:03
Speaker 1: a lot of what I do is I watch stuff
1:21:06
Speaker 1: on a screen, whether it be television or not. Um uh,
1:21:10
Speaker 1: during the when the terms in session, um, I will
1:21:14
Speaker 1: tend to watch a lot of sports, but not the
1:21:16
Speaker 1: typical sports. So I'm a big fan of Arsenal, the
1:21:21
Speaker 1: soccer team in England. And I know that your knowledgeable
1:21:24
Speaker 1: listeners out there are thinking, oh, I'm so sorry. Um No, well,
1:21:29
Speaker 1: World Cup is fascinating and when you get to what
1:21:32
Speaker 1: World Cup soccer is really, there's no commercial breaks. It's
1:21:35
Speaker 1: practically they don't you know American sports you're used to
1:21:39
Speaker 1: exactly you know, you you watch World Cup and like
1:21:42
Speaker 1: there have been times where it's like, gee, it's sixty minutes.
1:21:44
Speaker 1: We haven't had a break. Yet it's kind of amazing. Um,
1:21:47
Speaker 1: And there's a flow of that game that is really unique,
1:21:49
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful sport if you appreciate it for
1:21:53
Speaker 1: what it is. It really is the beautiful game. And
1:21:56
Speaker 1: there's a lot of strategy and a lot of incident
1:21:58
Speaker 1: going on once you've been around it enough to realize
1:22:00
Speaker 1: what incident is. I mean, there's not much scoring, but
1:22:03
Speaker 1: that actually makes the games more exciting because a goal
1:22:06
Speaker 1: matters so much. The games are always on edge and um,
1:22:11
Speaker 1: things could change in a in a minute. Um that
1:22:14
Speaker 1: it can truly lead to excitement, but it's also a
1:22:17
Speaker 1: sport that can truly lead to despair. I found uniquely well.
1:22:20
Speaker 1: I live in New York, so between the Mets and
1:22:22
Speaker 1: the Knicks, I know all about despare the I wish
1:22:26
Speaker 1: they would stop with the flopping in in World Cup
1:22:30
Speaker 1: and soccer. It's gotten to be way too much. So
1:22:34
Speaker 1: within your your field, what are you most optimistic about
1:22:37
Speaker 1: today and what are you most pessimistic about the most
1:22:40
Speaker 1: exciting thing in my field right now is the introduction
1:22:44
Speaker 1: of big data, if you will. That is, there are
1:22:47
Speaker 1: many social psychological questions and also questions of interests. People
1:22:50
Speaker 1: in the world that can be addressed with big data. Um,
1:22:55
Speaker 1: there's just great sources of data out there. And how
1:23:00
Speaker 1: it's going to be exploited. I have no idea, but
1:23:02
Speaker 1: I bet it's going to be great. So in the
1:23:03
Speaker 1: field of behavioral science in general, I'm very much looking
1:23:06
Speaker 1: forward to that as long as people who have the
1:23:09
Speaker 1: data and ash and the people who no traditional theory
1:23:15
Speaker 1: join up, because it is the case that a lot
1:23:18
Speaker 1: of people who do traditional theory don't know that these
1:23:21
Speaker 1: data sources exist, and so opportunities are missed, and the
1:23:26
Speaker 1: people who have big data don't realize that they can
1:23:28
Speaker 1: be quite naive and they're thinking about how to test
1:23:32
Speaker 1: the ideas that they have. They need to connect up
1:23:33
Speaker 1: with the theory people. If that happens, it's going to
1:23:36
Speaker 1: be great, quite interesting. I always look at Facebook, which
1:23:39
Speaker 1: I'm not a big fan of as a user, and
1:23:42
Speaker 1: I just imagine they must have unbelievable reams of data
1:23:46
Speaker 1: about all sorts of individuals and groups, and then how
1:23:52
Speaker 1: um how they behave in certain situations. I gotta think
1:23:55
Speaker 1: a team of research psychologists could have a field day
1:23:59
Speaker 1: with that. Oh uh, anthropologists, sociologist, economists, you name it.
1:24:03
Speaker 1: Absolutely interesting. And our our final two questions, what sort
1:24:07
Speaker 1: of advice would you give to uh recent college graduate
1:24:11
Speaker 1: who was interested in a career in psychology and research?
1:24:16
Speaker 1: Uh interest Uh, get some mentors and get more than
1:24:20
Speaker 1: one essentially absolutely, whether they be from your home institution
1:24:25
Speaker 1: or it's just your going to or wherever. Uh. People
1:24:27
Speaker 1: are willing to give advice, and some of it is
1:24:29
Speaker 1: actually good. Um. But also um uh meet people, be
1:24:35
Speaker 1: someone aggressive that but also presents yourself, give talks, have
1:24:39
Speaker 1: a blog, for example. Uh. It forces you to think,
1:24:43
Speaker 1: but it also gets you out there for people to see.
1:24:46
Speaker 1: And I don't think younger folks do that do that much.
1:24:49
Speaker 1: There are younger folks who do that, but I think
1:24:52
Speaker 1: there could be many more voices added to the mix.
1:24:54
Speaker 1: And our final question, what do you know about the
1:24:57
Speaker 1: world of psychology today that you would you knew thirty
1:25:01
Speaker 1: years ago or so when you were just beginning your career.
1:25:05
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's extremely interesting question. Um. I I sort
1:25:12
Speaker 1: of wish I had known what the trends were going
1:25:15
Speaker 1: to be uh in my field, because I've been around
1:25:18
Speaker 1: the block for quite a bit and I was the
1:25:21
Speaker 1: reason I'm in psychology is because this is the specific issues.
1:25:24
Speaker 1: They were at the forefront of psychology and social psychology
1:25:27
Speaker 1: at that point, and then it was really about misbelief,
1:25:32
Speaker 1: errors that people made and so forth. That's sort of
1:25:35
Speaker 1: the foundation which I built my career. Uh now, and
1:25:38
Speaker 1: by the way, what we weren't asked to do is
1:25:40
Speaker 1: we weren't asked to solve those questions. The idea of
1:25:43
Speaker 1: nudging with several decades into the future, and now the
1:25:46
Speaker 1: field is very much about Okay, what do you do
1:25:48
Speaker 1: about it? And I'm I'm a little bit behind the
1:25:52
Speaker 1: younger generation because I didn't have to pay attention to it.
1:25:56
Speaker 1: And I wish I had known that at some point
1:25:58
Speaker 1: the field was going to get to the obvious question
1:26:00
Speaker 1: of we have all this knowledge about what people do
1:26:05
Speaker 1: that is a mistake, how do you get people to
1:26:08
Speaker 1: avoid those mistakes or repair those mistakes, or how in
1:26:11
Speaker 1: general do you improve people's lives. Finally the field got
1:26:14
Speaker 1: to that. I wish someone had come to me and
1:26:16
Speaker 1: basically said, that question is going to be the question
1:26:19
Speaker 1: in the future. You should prepare. But you know, not
1:26:22
Speaker 1: too long ago, it wasn't really thought of his academics jobs.
1:26:25
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, just tell us what the knowledge is
1:26:28
Speaker 1: and the policymakers will figure out that's absolutely right. It
1:26:30
Speaker 1: was going to be uh, that was going to be
1:26:33
Speaker 1: offloaded to somebody else. But it's finally come into the field.
1:26:36
Speaker 1: And I think in part because science does react to
1:26:40
Speaker 1: society and um uh, now people are developing apps to
1:26:45
Speaker 1: do this, computer programs to do that new technology that
1:26:48
Speaker 1: helps us other thing. So the idea is the endpoint
1:26:50
Speaker 1: is how do you develop something that people can use?
1:26:53
Speaker 1: Is much more in the heads of younger researchers than
1:26:56
Speaker 1: it is for older researchers. Researchers they think of that
1:26:59
Speaker 1: as a natural end point of research. And uh, I
1:27:03
Speaker 1: should have gone, I should have been prepared for that
1:27:06
Speaker 1: shifting time. Quite quite interesting. Um, thank you David for
1:27:10
Speaker 1: being so generous with your time. We have been speaking
1:27:13
Speaker 1: with Professor David Dunning of the University of Michigan. If
1:27:17
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, well look up an intro Down
1:27:20
Speaker 1: an Inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any
1:27:23
Speaker 1: of the previous three hundred plus conversations we've had over
1:27:26
Speaker 1: the past five and a half years. We love your comments,
1:27:30
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
1:27:34
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Leave comments. What was I gonna say?
1:27:38
Speaker 1: Leave a review on Apple iTunes? Uh. If you want
1:27:41
Speaker 1: to see the daily reads at Professor Dunning Reference, you
1:27:45
Speaker 1: could find those at rid Halts dot com and sign
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Speaker 1: up there. Check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com.
1:27:51
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I would be
1:27:55
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not thank the crack staff who
1:27:57
Speaker 1: helps me put together uh this conversation each week. Sam
1:28:02
Speaker 1: Chivraj is my producer slash booker. Michael Batnick is my
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Speaker 1: head of research. Nick Falco is my audio engineer. I'm
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Speaker 1: Barry Hults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on
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