The Dunning-Kruger Effect and Missionary Age

“the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt" --Bertrand Russell

While watching Wimbeldon a couple of years ago I thought to myself "that doesn't look so hard; I bet I could do that."

But I caught myself in a moment of reflection and asked myself whether, in reality, I could. To put it bluntly, I have as much chance at success as the proverbial snowball on the ferry across the Styx. I can count the number of times that I have picked up a tennis racket on one hand.

With that in mind, why would I watch the world’s elite tennis players and think that I could somehow just pick up a racket and play like them?

My daughter is taking guitar lessons. When she started she thought that it looked really easy. But each time she learns something new, she realizes how much more there is that she doesn't yet know.

It turns out that this is a widespread psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). When we lack knowledge of a subject or skill, we lack the wherewithal to know how much more there is to know. Dunning-Kruger tells us that the less we know about something, the less we realize just how ignorant we are. When we don't know, we don't know what it is that we don't know. The more we know, the more we realize how much more there is to know.

With regards to my tennis potential, I lacked sufficient knowledge/skill to accurately assess my incompetence. I was, in short, too stupid to realize I was stupid.

If one is not aware of a deficit in knowledge or skill, it follows that it is all too easy to be overconfident in one’s knowledge or skill. In the words of Dunning and Kruger: “This overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.”

If nothing compels you to see where you are wrong, a default position is to presume you are right. A child who has not learned of the reasons to reject a belief in Santa can be quite confident in telling her father that he is mistaken in not believing in Father Christmas. The child’s confidence in rejecting her parent’s assertion is a function of the child’s ignorance. Being unaware of further possible information that could shake her confidence, it seems inconceivable to her that she could be mistaken.

You see this frequently with introductory ethics or logic students. Students almost invariably presume that they are above average in their moral reasoning and critical thinking skills. Yet as they study logic and ethics, they inevitably realize that their skills were lacking, and that there are many ways in which to improve.

Like hundreds of thousands before and after me, a few decades ago I spent two years on an LDS proselytizing mission. I was quite fond of "bible bashing," as they say, because I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my cherished beliefs were correct.

If you had asked that missionary version of myself to rate my certainty that the claims of Mormonism were literally true, I would have confidently asserted that I was “100% certain.” Not that I “thought.” Not that I “was confident.” Not that I “believed.’

I “knew.”

But how? How did I know?

LDS epistemology (a term I had never heard prior to the mission) told me that my feelings were accurate detectors of truth, and that the elimination of doubt was the same thing as knowledge (Ether 3: 19; Alma 32: 40-41). Not knowing any alternative theories of truth, I could be 100% certain that the LDS theories of knowledge and truth detection were 100% accurate.

Such confidence can create a convincing illusion of correctness. It is true that being more informed and more knowledgeable increases the probability that one will draw correct conclusions. The more one is informed, the more confidence can be placed in ones opinions. Consequently, it is a short step of (fallacious) reasoning to presume that because an individual expresses confidence in her opinions, she must therefore be well informed, and is more likely to be correct. However, just because B follows from A, that is no guarantee that a specific instance of B was caused by A. If whenever it rains (A), your lawn gets wet (B), that doesn’t mean that every time your lawn is wet (B), you can conclude that it rained (A). There can be other explanations for the wet lawn—like your sprinkler system. Likewise, being informed (A) leads to confidence in conclusions (B), but confidence in conclusions can be accounted for by something other than being well informed—like the Dunning-Kruger effect.

So is it any wonder that they sent us out to teach Mormonism at an immature 19 years old? It was 21 years old for the Sisters at the time. Current missionaries are even younger: 18 for the young men, and 19 for the young ladies. At that age we are disturbingly undereducated. Had I studied even a small amount comparative religion, logic, psychology, anthropology, neurophysiology, epistemology...or practically any academic discipline at all… I would have realized how profoundly ignorant I really was, and how foolish I appeared to those I was trying to convince with my confidence. I sincerely believed that my bold confidence would be the deciding factor in the conversion of my investigators, when in reality, to the educated, my bold confidence was as convincing as that of the little girl who scolds her Father for not believing in Santa.

As a young uninformed, undereducated missionary, I could testify with bold certainty because I was too stupid to know that I was stupid.

On a related note, is it any wonder that our friends and family members hardly ever ask us why we have left the Church. For many of them, maintaining a strategic level of ignorance with regards to LDS history and theology allows them to maintain their confidence (i.e. faith) in the institution.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of it: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 (6): 1121-34.