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