WordPress Post on Dunning

Post a 200-300 word summary and summary of the Dunning article to your new WordPress site. As Michael Newman describes in the reading assignment, spend about 50 words describing the background of the source (the author, publication, date, intended reader, genre or field). Then spend 100 words describing the topic and general argument of the piece. Finally, spend your final 50 words describing what kind of research it uses (or maybe what kind it doesn’t) and why the source is useful or relevant in the context of this course.

David Dunning is an American social psychologist and a professor at the University of Michigan. He also taught psychology at Cornell University but retired. In his article, “We are all Confident Idiots” which was originally posted in October 27, 2014, seems to have been written for people who may or may not feel socially aware. The Social Justice Foundation is the articles publication and given off that I would feel the genre and/or field that this article would be placed in is social work. Dunning says that people are given a false confidence most times in front of a camera. Meaning, that so they do not look dumb by saying they don’t know the answer to the question, they conjure the first thing they can think of, even it is completely wrong. The power lies in how confidently they say these answers and even backing it up making it sound factual. He also blames politicians for also doing this. “To a great degree, we fail to recognize the frequency and scope of our ignorance.” He calls this the “Dunning-Kruger effect. People lacking the ability to see the competence in order to sound good. The sources the articles uses seem to really help explain the articles words. Such as the Jimmy Kimmel video, proving the point at the very end of the video that even when the interviewee saying that everything was fictional the woman being interviewed was acting like she knew that and that she was just playing along. The Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen and the research her colleagues used in the article also shows that it happens to people in society that are deemed “smart”. I find this relevant to CM213 course is that reading the article “How to Read a Book” by Michael Newman helps me to understand the path to becoming a better reader and note-taker. Also the David Dunning article that I spoke about helps to understand saying “I don’t know” would be better for me then saying anything off the top of my head pretending I know. Saying “I don’t know” helps me to then go out and find out and learn what it is that I don’t know.