In 1995 McArthur Wheeler robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight and made his escape. Remarkably, he looked directly at multiple security cameras during the robberies with no attempt to cover his face. His picture was broadcast that evening on the eleven o’clock news, and he was arrested an hour later. Investigators later learned that Wheeler had rubbed lemon juice on his face and was under the impression that doing so would make him invisible to cameras. He reasoned that lemon juice can be used as an invisible ink on paper, so if he rubbed it on his entire face, he would become invisible to cameras. Th is stunning bit of ignorance is surprising but sadly not unusual.

Prompted by Wheeler’s bank robbery, two researchers at Cornell University, David Dunning and Justin Kruger, began studying the accuracy of self-assessment. They wondered how people could be such poor judges of their own abilities. Their research was published in a 1999 report titled, "Unskilled and Unaware of It."

Now dubbed the Dunning-Kruger effect, the research explored an important concept that all experts should know and recognize. It is human nature for unskilled people to be horribly poor judges of their own ability. They fail to recognize their own lack of skill, and furthermore, they are poor judges of the skills of others. It is true across any discipline or industry. Whether we are talking about dancers, painters, sociologists, or mathematicians, the lowest quartile of performers has the most inflated opinion of their own ability.

This phenomenon can be particularly frustrating for experts. Time and again, you will encounter uneducated, untrained, or unskilled people who think, speak, and act as if they are proficient, when they clearly are not. Charles Darwin recognized this phenomenon when he penned, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

As an expert, you might prefer that the unskilled people around you recognize that they are unskilled. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Experts of all stripes should expect unskilled people to have inflated opinions of their own capability. It is simply the way it is. Yet too often experts are surprised and even aghast when they encounter the “unskilled and unaware.”

Unfortunately, there is very little an expert can do to quickly reverse the Dunning-Kruger effect. Confronting the novice will not rectify an inflated perception. Telling the untrained that they are wrong more often fosters resentment than cooperation. Pointing out the failings of the beginner will not reduce their opinion of themself, but it will reduce their opinion of you.

There is one remedy for the Dunning-Kruger effect, but it takes time to accomplish. The better trained a person is at a task, the more proficient that person becomes, and the better judge they become of their own skill. Once a person becomes proficient at something, their perception of their skills becomes more accurate. They also gain an appreciation for the skill of the true expert.

The least-skilled people will still tend to hold the highest degree of illusory superiority, and moderately skilled individuals will still tend to maintain a higher opinion of themselves than is justified. So, don’t be surprised when people are unskilled and unaware. It is only the truly proficient who underestimate their own abilities.