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Understanding Trump: Dunning-Kruger Cognitive Bias

By Shlomo Maital

     Having trouble understanding President Trump?   Read thousands of words and columns, blasting Trump, but you still (like me) do not understand who IS this guy?

     Read David Brooks (Op Ed, New York Times, May 15)….   He has figured it out. Trump has a syndrome. Dunning Kruger Cognitive Bias.

       What is it?   Here is the definition: *

     Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error.

     Meaning?   Incompetent people think they are more competent than they are, precisely because…they are incompetent. Trump highly overestimates his abilities (“best speech ever to Congress on healthcare”,   “how to fix America’s aircraft carriers”, etc.).

       People with Dunning-Kruger, who lead nations, are very very dangerous. Not knowing is one thing. Not knowing you don’t know is quite another. And when you lead the world’s most powerful, wealthy nation?   Disaster. Moreover, people around Trump cannot control him, and are fired abruptly when they oppose him, a corollary of Dunning-Kruger.  Trump is at the summit of Mount Stupid (see diagram), and since January 20, has proven to be there with blunders almost daily.

       What will happen?   Let’s see if America’s constitution and political institutions are capable and resilient enough to deal with this disastrous cognitive bias.

* Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 77(6), Dec 1999, 1121-1134.