Learn a new word Thursday, I mean Wednesday: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I know that the wildly popular 'Learn a new word' series on the blog is meant to be a semi-regular Thursday feature, I didn't want to let this new term I just came across languish for another 24 hours, hence we have the first iteration of 'Learn a new word Wednesday.'

Today's word/term helps us understand the problems we have had in our own careers and in our own organizations with an element of the traditional performance management process known as the 'self-assessment' or 'self-rating.'

You know, that component of the typical performance management process (usually positioned at Step 1), where you and everyone else is meant to attempt to quantify your own skills, competencies, progress towards meeting whatever goals were set for you way back when.

Let's see, do I give myself a '3' or a '4' for 'Tolerance for Ambiguity?' If I go with the '4', does that make me look like someone who is just trying to prop myself up above the other jokers in the group? But if I only give myself a '3', then that will make it easier for my manager to rate me as average too, since if I only think I am a '3' then why should she disagree with me?'

It's a nightmare, no doubt.

Which brings us to today's Learn a new word. Let me introduce, (apologies if you have heard of this before, it was new to me over when I saw it) - The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

From our pals at Wikipedia, (so you know this is true):

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. The bias was first experimentally observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999. Dunning and Kruger attributed the bias to the metacognitive inability of the unskilled to evaluate their own ability level accurately.

Their research also suggests that conversely, highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks that are easy for them also are easy for others

There it is, scientific proof that shows that we are all, the skilled and the unskilled alike, (substitute skilled and unskilled for 'average' and 'high' performers and you see where I am going), pretty much incapable of accurately assessing our own ability.

It makes intuitive sense, kind of, that the unskilled or even average performers would assess themselves a little too favorably when given the opportunity - after all who likes to actually admit they are not very good at something? Add into this tendency the crazy pressures and power dynamics that come from the workplace performance management process and you can easily see how self-assessments become really dubious in terms of their value.

On the flip side, the Dunning-Kruger effect tells us that highly skilled performers will over undervalue themselves and their abilities. If I can do this easily, that must mean it is easy to do, goes their thinking.

This is likely the fundamental reason why in sports so many of the very greatest players don't actually succeed in post-playing career efforts at coaching. Playing the game at a high level came so easily to them, that they can't see why it does not come so easily to the normal or average players that they have to coach and mentor, resulting in frustration and suboptimal outcomes.

You might have had a sneaking suspicion as an HR pro of the shaky and questionable value of the self-assessment process. If you did, you know have a fancy term to attach to your POV. 

Don't blame the player. Blame the Dunning-Kruger effect. 

Siren fatigue and the danger of being tuned out

Last weekend this headline, 'Did Global Warming Destroy My Hometown?' from the POPSCI blog caught my attention, and indeed it proved to be a really interesting and personal read about the effects of the devastating tornado that descended on Jopin, MO last spring.  In fact to me, the piece was interesting not for its ability to answer the question expressed in the title, (I suppose the answer is really 'Maybe' or 'We don't know'), but rather it's examination of what happened in Joplin before, during, and after the tornado tore through town.Joplin tornado path - Click for a larger image

The Joplin tornado of May 22, 2011 would eventually be categorized as a EF5 storm, the strongest and most dangerous classification, result in 161 fatalities, 1,150 injuries, and cause over $2B in damages. Of course none of this, the seriousness of such a massive and deadly storm, and the impact and devastation it would render, could have been known in advance by the people of Joplin that day. While the full nature of the fury could not be known in advance, there was at least some indication that something bad was about to happen in Joplin. By most accounts, the series of steps conducted by the various national and local authorities responsible for weather forecasting and public safety resulted in the sounding of the tornado warning siren in Joplin about 30 minutes prior to the tornado's arrival functioned as designed and expected. But despite the advance warning, and other precautionary measures taken by an area well accustomed to potentially dangerous weather, significant fatalities and injuries still occurred.

One reason, and probably the primary reason, was of course the sheer size and destructiveness of the May 22 tornado. As an EF5 storm, packing 200+ MPH winds, there is little that even the most soundly built structures and safty shelters could do to withstand that kind of assault. But in addition to the fury of the massive storm, some reports, including the above-referenced POPSCI piece call attention to the idea of something called siren fatigue, the tendency for people in high-risk tornado areas to downplay the significance of, and perhaps to fail to take appropriate safety precautions when the tornado siren is called due to the high volume of tornado false alarms that have been previously sounded.

From the POPSCI piece:

But the biggest concern was what the investigators called siren fatigue.

Like many other towns, Joplin’s policy is to sound a three-minute siren when a storm with winds stronger than 75 mph is approaching town, regardless of whether an NWS agency has issued a watch or warning. So at 5:11 on May 22, after local emergency managers were informed that a funnel cloud had been sighted over southeast Kansas, the city sounded a siren. But warning too early can be dangerous, particularly in a siren-jaded area. The NWS study describes one man’s confused, lackadaisical response: “(1) Heard first sirens at 5:11 p.m. CDT (estimated 30–35 minutes before tornado hit). (2) Went to the TV and heard NWS warning from TV override that indicated tornado near airport drive seven miles north (polygon #30) of his location. (3) Went on porch with family and had a cigar.”

Twenty-seven minutes later, the man heard another set of sirens. At this point, he “thought something wasn’t right,” so he went back inside and turned on the TV, where meteorologists were still warning that the threat was north of town. Then his wife yelled “Basement!” The report concludes this summary of events thusly: “Tornado hit as they reached the top of the basement stairs, destroying their home.”

Wow. Some gripping, riveting stuff. The kind of thing that should make most of us glad we don't have those types of life of death kinds of calls to make. Sounding the alarms and sirens when there is the just the chance of a dangerous storm, most of which either do not materialize or are relatively minor, has the tendency over time of dulling the siren's effectiveness, and introducing a kind of complacency in the minds of some residents.  While the problem is fairly easily identified, the right solution to combat siren fatigue is less clear. Different signal sounds for different local conditions is one option, better and more accurate forecasting is another, but eventually when faced with the decision of whether or not to sound the sirens, the need for erroring on the side of safety usually prevails.

It's just a couple of months until the start of the active tornado season in many parts of the US, and no doubt once the storms start forming in the Midwest and South the siren fatigue discussion will be continued. The larger point in all of this, and why I thought it relevant to write about on a site (mostly) about the workplace - if people can be conditioned to tune out messages meant to quite possibly save their lives, then it is about 100% certain that at least some of the important messages you are sending to your colleagues, your staff, your friends - whatever, have a good chance of being tuned out as well.

Even if the message you need to convey is an important one, like a tornado warning siren, if it keeps coming in the same manner, at the same time, delivered over and over again, eventually it becomes just another piece of noise in the stream. Fortunately for most of us, the consequence of our messages being tuned out probably isn't terribly significant in the big picture. Most people will carry on just fine by ignoring our message.

Fortunately, I suppose, the danger is probably more to our own careers.