Siete
Platinum Member
- May 19, 2014
- 34,325
- 3,990
- 1,130
Donald Trumpâs dominance in the GOP presidential race can be largely explained by ignorance; his candidacy, after all, is most popular among Republican voters without college degrees. Their expertise about current affairs is too fractured and full of holes to spot that only 9 percent of Trumpâs statements are âtrueâ or âmostlyâ true, according to PolitiFact, whereas 57 percent are âfalseâ or âmostly falseââthe remainder being âpants on fireâ untruths. Trump himself has memorably declared: âI love the poorly educated.â
But as a psychologist who has studied human behaviorâincluding voter behaviorâfor decades, I think there is something deeper going on. The problem isnât that voters are too uninformed. It is that they donât know just how uninformed they are.
Story Continued Below
Psychological research suggests that people, in general, suffer from what has become known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They have little insight about the cracks and holes in their expertise. In studies in my research lab, people with severe gaps in knowledge and expertise typically fail to recognize how little they know and how badly they perform. To sum it up, the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that taskâand if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task. This includes political judgment.
We have found this pattern in logical reasoning, grammar, emotional intelligence, financial literacy, numeracy, firearm care and safety, debate skill, and college coursework. Others have found a similar lack of insight among poor chess players, unskilled medical lab technicians, medical students unsuccessfully completing an obstetrics/gynecology rotation, and people failing a test on performing CPR.
This syndrome may well be the key to the Trump voterâand perhaps even to the man himself. Trump has served up numerous illustrative examples of the effect as he continues his confident audition to be leader of the free world even as he seems to lack crucial information about the job. In a December debate he appeared ignorant of what the nuclear triad is. Elsewhere, he has mused that Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weaponsâcasually reversing decades of U.S. foreign policy.
Many commentators have pointed to these confident missteps as products of Trumpâs alleged narcissism and egotism. My take would be that it's the other way around. Not seeing the mistakes for what they are allows any potential narcissism and egotism to expand unchecked.
In voters, lack of expertise would be lamentable but perhaps not so worrisome if people had some sense of how imperfect their civic knowledge is. If they did, they could repair it. But the Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests something different. It suggests that some voters, especially those facing significant distress in their life, might like some of what they hear from Trump, but they do not know enough to hold him accountable for the serious gaffes he makes. They fail to recognize those gaffes as missteps.
Read more: The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump
But as a psychologist who has studied human behaviorâincluding voter behaviorâfor decades, I think there is something deeper going on. The problem isnât that voters are too uninformed. It is that they donât know just how uninformed they are.
Story Continued Below
Psychological research suggests that people, in general, suffer from what has become known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They have little insight about the cracks and holes in their expertise. In studies in my research lab, people with severe gaps in knowledge and expertise typically fail to recognize how little they know and how badly they perform. To sum it up, the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that taskâand if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task. This includes political judgment.
We have found this pattern in logical reasoning, grammar, emotional intelligence, financial literacy, numeracy, firearm care and safety, debate skill, and college coursework. Others have found a similar lack of insight among poor chess players, unskilled medical lab technicians, medical students unsuccessfully completing an obstetrics/gynecology rotation, and people failing a test on performing CPR.
This syndrome may well be the key to the Trump voterâand perhaps even to the man himself. Trump has served up numerous illustrative examples of the effect as he continues his confident audition to be leader of the free world even as he seems to lack crucial information about the job. In a December debate he appeared ignorant of what the nuclear triad is. Elsewhere, he has mused that Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weaponsâcasually reversing decades of U.S. foreign policy.
Many commentators have pointed to these confident missteps as products of Trumpâs alleged narcissism and egotism. My take would be that it's the other way around. Not seeing the mistakes for what they are allows any potential narcissism and egotism to expand unchecked.
In voters, lack of expertise would be lamentable but perhaps not so worrisome if people had some sense of how imperfect their civic knowledge is. If they did, they could repair it. But the Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests something different. It suggests that some voters, especially those facing significant distress in their life, might like some of what they hear from Trump, but they do not know enough to hold him accountable for the serious gaffes he makes. They fail to recognize those gaffes as missteps.
Read more: The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump