Explanation for Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush's opinions of themselves? Dunning-Kruger

[stevenleser]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."

I think Dunning-Kruger effect explains a lot of Republican politicians, like Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush.

"Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1.tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2.fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3.fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4.recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve."
--------------------------------------------

I think that if you pair Dunning-Kruger's posits with the American electorate's general bias against people who seem to be smarter than themselves and you basically get some of the more significant reason the Republican Party is successful. Incompetent people who think they are capable but whose inadequacies and lack of congnitive abilities are apparent and an electorate who likes to vote for dumb people. It's a match made in...well...it's a match anyway.

[Zambero]

1. Kindly include Gov. Rick Perry with this elite group

Herman Cain as well. And best to not leave out Michelle Bachmann. All legends in their own minds.

[stevenleser]

3. Agreed. All of them fit.

[unblock]

6. why stop there?

some of them are more laughably incompetent than others, but very, VERY few of the republicans of note on the national scene are even close to competent.

the right-wing machine has turned being a politician into a business, with very defined role, and particular skills. the competence and smarts and planning and strategy and so on has been delegated to the paid-for think tanks and the other powers-that-be behind the scenes. the politicians are the mere front-men, and the only real skills appropriate are a penchant for lying and script-reading, an eagerness to take orders from hq, an insane level of loyalty, and an ability to attack and punish disloyalty or disagreement.

[valerief]

11. I think most are willfully corrupt rather than incompetent. They choose to fuck us over. nt

[unblock]

19. i agree they are willfully corrupt as far as their positions go. but they're incompetent

as far as getting their facts straight and so on.

[valerief]

23. Mentally lazy and incurious maybe. Incompetent makes it sound like they

tried and failed. My guess is they don't even try.

[usrname]

20. The willfully corrupt are

the Rmoneys, the Cheneys, the Rumsfelds, Roves, Bush Sr., et al. They're handlers of the incompetents. Of course, corrupt and incompetent aren't mutually exclusive. Rumsfeld is definitely corrupt AND incompetent. Same with Wolfowitz and Pearle and Gonzales and Scalia and many others.

Not sure where to place Condi Rice. Is she incompetent or corrupt. Or both?

[valerief]

24. And those guys are only the agents for the truly corrupt--the gazillionaires who run the planet. nt

[SemperEadem]

7. allen west, too

buffoons, one and all...

[edhopper]

2. I linked this in

the middle of a thread.

But it deserves it's own headline here.

Thanks

[unblock]

4. i agree with dunning-kruger, but more important is the anti-intellectualism in politics

i think the politicians themselves might be victims of the phenomenon. sarah palin THINKING she's qualified, etc.

to some extent this goes with sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder. these people surround themselves with sycophants who encourage them to think of themselves as not just competent, but great.



but the bigger problem is that the electorate has been brainwashed into thinking that a person who is dumb is somehow more moral than someone who is smart; that an average smarts, weak student, and provincial guy you could have a beer with would somehow make a better president than someone who is really smart, well-educated, and well-travelled.

the electorate doesn't just like to vote for dumb people on its own. the electorate likes to vote for dumb people because puppet-masters like dumb presidents they figure they can control and and they then sell those dumb presidents to the public.

trust me, if ever right-wingers had a very smart, well-educated, well-travelled guy running against an not-so-bright democrat (hard to imagine that scenario these days, but bear with me), suddenly they'd be singing a different tune and suddenly the electorate would be taking that lack of credentials and capabilities to be a liability.

[SemperEadem]

8. the electorate who are brainwashed, by and large

are that particular flavor of xtian who attend "prosperity gospel" megachurches and truly believe that god guiding the candidate instead of them having the smarts and education to know their own mind is preferable. That is why they have no problem flocking to these charlatans. Those people mirror back the dumb in them... those people tell these "voters" what they want to hear/what they need to hear in order to absolve themselves of having to spend the time and brain cells to educate themselves and completely understand what they need to understand. They are quick to dismiss anything outside of being told what to do/think.

[grasswire]

5. I disagree.

George W. Bush's opinion of himself is deeply rooted in his Narcissistic Personality Disorder -- and NPD is a quantifiable disorder that has passed the rigorous standards required for inclusion in the DSM.

The effect that you cite may also apply to those who have a personality disorder, but an "effect" sounds like a trivialization of a deeper problem, to me.

[pscot]

9. I think we need to differentiate between

stupid and malevolent. Stupid would be the teabaggers, but Grover Norquist and the Brothers Koch and most of the Republican leadership are no dummies. Intelligenge doesn't preclude an authoritarian, winner take all bent.

[maddiemom]

14. Totally agree with you

Norquist has come out and said that the only thing "they" (I assume the Republican puppet masters) are looking for in a president is someone who can use a pen. Who appointed this guy Fearless Leader anyway? The Kochs are sneakier and richer, but some of the stuff Norquist has said would be considered treasonous in another era.

[Alcibiades]

10. I've long had an aphorism that describes these people

A smart person is someone who knows enough to know how little they know.

These folks are the opposite of that.

[MrScorpio]

12. A D-K rehash is always welcome nt

[11 Bravo]

13. Yup, too fucking stupid to even know they're stupid!

[TrogL]

15. Smart people are stupid

One of their favorite memes

[IDemo]

16. Or just basing their facts on a belief system

Everything is "just a theory*" with the D-K'ers, after all.

* - A scientific theory is a set of principles that explain and predict phenomena. Scientists create scientific theories with the scientific method, when they are originally proposed as hypotheses and tested for accuracy through observations and experiments.

[LASlibinSC]

22. uhh..What is K-W?

not afraid to ask the dumb questions, as you can plainly see!

[IDemo]

25. D-K, not K-W

Dunning–Kruger, the topic of the thread.

[LASlibinSC]

26. Thank you..my bad!

.

[Odin2005]

17. The Lake Wobegon Effect.

Everyone thinks they are above average.

[LASlibinSC]

18. I agree. There are things about various subjects that I realize I don't know enough about to know what I don't know.

There are people that will never admit to ignorance. They equate it with stupidity. Not that there's a lack of stupidity, there is plenty of that. I think too many lack curiosity. That, to me, is why Jon Huntsman was never going to be their nominee. He didn't fit the template that 'real ' Rep. do. He was 'other' and they simply weren't curious as to why he would work in the Obama administration, he was other.These voters need to see what they have been TOLD is their reflection. RW pols know this and use this to get elected. Rove and brothers Koch know they are perceived as 'other' Rather they enjoy money, power and secrecy behind the throne. Just sayin...

[no_hypocrisy]

27. More on Dunning Kruger

http://jamesjacques.hubpages.com/hub/The-Dunning-Kruger-Effect-in-Practise

[LASlibinSC]

28. Great link, thank you!

very informative!

[no_hypocrisy]

29. Don't laugh. Found it on my F/B page when I woke up.

And for what it's worth, I'm humbled by this new knowledge. I think I've deluded myself for a good many years that I was competent when I needed to improve myself.

[leveymg]

30. The 1% aren't incompetent, and they generally get the best gov't they can buy.

People in the lower rungs who identify with the super-rich or buy into right-wing propaganda memes. and vote against their own economic self-interests, however, may have some sort of deficit.

Dunning-Kruger does not apply to those who actually run things.

[stevenleser]

31. But it does apply to many of those they put in power.

Of course, the Koch brothers, despicable as they are, are not stupid and not to be trifled with nor are any of the billionaire SuperPAC donors we have seen, but the folks actually running for the office now and in the past are another matter.

[leveymg]

32. Bush the Lesser comes to mind first, of course.

Sometimes, incompetent leaders are the most effective front men. Senility also provides a layer of plausible deniability. Reagan used the "I can't recall" defense quite effectively, whereas Nixon couldn't. There's got to be doctoral dissertation in that for somebody.