Imposter Syndrome – Parts Per Billion

Noticing Our Ignorance

Coming out of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Many a times google searches are the final resort to end debates or any conflicts. Such common debates among our friends/ relatives/ acquaintances mainly require third party confirmation because both sides are adamant on their opinions. You will notice that even when a practical and reasonable argument is placed in front of the person, he/she will not accept that argument and stick to their opinions. Have you wondered why does that happen? The internet, media, “Whats App / Facebook universities” have developed enough “facts” on everything by consistent bombarding of the information and curated, person specific, behavior specific content that everybody has opinion about everything. Most of the times, peoples consider themselves expert of the field while presenting such opinions.

One more question, is their certain group of people who are susceptible to such level of stupidity due to ignorance? The answer is No.

Turns out that everyone – literally everyone of us is prone to such stupidity, lack of knowledge and ignorance.

We are what make up of our decisions. Such confident ignorance creates more chaos in the information and knowledge we have thereby may affect our decision-making process. And this ill-information, ignorance and our confidence for it reveals its devilish nature when the decisions are very crucial, life altering. No wonder someone has already said that “Half-knowledge is dangerous!”

Dunning-Kruger Effect explained in Psychology has some interesting findings on the relation between our competence and confidence about our knowledge. We will see how it may help us in understanding the nature of how we understand what we know and what we don’t know.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger identified a cognitive bias in people across various fields. They asked people to evaluate their expertise in certain fields and asked them to rate themselves accordingly. One of the highlighted and most famous result can be shown as below:

There are two immediate things that we can understand from this graph:

Those belonging to low competency group perceive their knowledge greater that their actual knowledge. They consider that they know more even but in actual they know less of it. Seems like they are overconfident about what they know.
The area where the graphs cross each other is even more interesting. Those belonging to high competency group under-calculate their competency. Even though they have more competency, more knowledge than others in reality, they still think that they don’t know enough. They are not confident about what they know.

This result reminds me of the quote by Bertrand Russel.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

– Bertrand Russel

The Double Burden of Ignorance

Dunning-Kruger Effect is more associated with the overconfidence that less competent people carry. The effect associated with the lack of confidence in more confident/ expert people is associated with the effect called “The Imposter Syndrome”. People with imposter syndrome consider that they are this fake person acting like they are genius/ expert and the “fake”-ness may get exposed sometimes even though they are genius in reality. They think that what they have achieved, known is not enough.

So, one can say that the Dunning-Kruger Effect is the opposite of the imposter Syndrome.

In single sentence the Dunning-Kruger Effect can be summarized as below:

“The ignorant people are ignorant of their ignorance.”

This is also known as “the double burden of ignorance”. Dunning and Kruger explained their interesting idea about our awareness about our own knowledge in this way- The less competent people – the ignorant people carry double curse. The first one is that they actually don’t know enough about something. The second one is that this lack of knowledge makes them think that they have known everything that there is to know. The lack of knowledge blinds them from knowing beyond what they know, thereby shunting their search for knowledge.

“Ignorance often refuses rather can’t recognize itself”
David Dunning

This is sometimes known as “The Illusion of Superiority”. Such, confident but incompetent people are always susceptible to two immediate regrets while making decisions.

They make mistakes based on the less information/ less knowledge they have and reach poor decisions.
This lack of information further prevents them from acknowledging and further correcting these mistakes. And the cycle further feeds itself.

The Roots of Dunning- Kruger Effect

The first cause is apparent in the double burden of ignorance indicating that lack of knowledge/ expertise bounds the definition of what the real knowledge/ expertise is.

The second one is hidden in our confidence about anything. While living in the social construct, it is mostly true that the confidence has huge impact on our decision making. People believe more in confident opinions rather that their truth value. Confidence brings certainty thereby predictability which calms our minds from the chaos of the decisions and their consequences. People always like certainty and confidence gives you that.

No wonder people say that:

“Bad confidence and Good Confidence both are same- The Confidence”

Thus, incompetent people are always confident about what they know about things and also believe that there is nothing more to know which brings the comfort to their mind.

One more reason is hidden in our upbringing and the environment around us. Student reading same books for the exam perform differently. It is because of the ways in which they construct the ideas provided by the book in their mind and this is dependent on how we think, what are our basic ideas about everything. Our thinking, our basic ideas are directly affected by our environment, upbringing, culture, parenting, companions which are totally random in every sense.

In addition to this, we tend to take mental shortcuts while knowing, understanding anything, thereby cementing the ideas of knowing everything immediately. Simple example is the digital display. Even though the display has minute pixels of three colors only- we collectively perceive it as a whole object, whole picture of something totally different. Our brain always tries to fill the gaps in what we see and what we know. This is not just for incompetent people rather this is true for every single human being.

If we do not question what we know about something and carelessly build our understanding around it then, such knowledge can be easily defeated. Which is highly possible in people with dunning-Kruger effect.

Metacognition and acknowledging our ignorance

So, if our ignorance blinds our awareness of the ignorance itself, then how can we overcome this?

One part of the answer is hidden in “Metacognition”. Metacognition is the awareness of one’s ‘ways thinking’ and ‘knowledge building’ by finding the patterns during such thinking.

There is one interesting concept called Johari Window which can be simply put in the following picture:

There are four parts of yourself:

One that is known to yourself and others – everyone including you are aware of it
One that is only known to you and not others – only you know about it
One that is known to others but not to you – others can see that in you but not you
One that is neither known by you nor by the others – the real unknown

This concept was developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham (Jo from Joseph and Hari from Harrington) in 1955. The Johari Window is used to explain how we interact with each other and have relationship with each other.

The Johari Window focuses on improving the relationships by expanding the “Open Area” or “Arena” using feedback from surrounding. Johari Window is mostly referred to explain our social interactions and relationship building but it can show some directions for escaping out of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

In similarity to our personality or its awareness, there are four types of knowledge:

Known knowns: knowledge that you can know
Known unknowns: Knowledge that you know exists and is beyond your reach/ understanding
Unknown knowns: Knowledge that you have already but you are not aware of it
Unknown unknowns: That which is not known and cannot be known

The Intellectual Humility

The second part lies in “Intellectual Humility”.

The “Known knowns” type of knowledge is already established and uniform throughout the people.
The “Known unknowns” type of knowledge cannot be known completely which needs one to accept the bounds of his/her own understandings and the uncertainty of the knowledge that comes with it. It’s like making peace with what you cannot know and keep on improving it. The known unknowns can be understood by feedback and remaining open to ideas. Understanding what the experts of that field know. The “real intellectual humility”.
The “Unknown knowns” type of knowledge is revealed when you interact with others and thereby understand what others understand. It’s just you have it already but when you see others doing it you realize that you can do it too.
The “Unknown unknowns” type of knowledge is more susceptible to Dunning-Kruger Effect. Where the double burden of ignorance is highlighted. The intellectual humility is the only way to get out of it.

In short, there can be four important ways to overcome Dunning-Kruger Effect thereby our ignorance. Humility, Feedback, Criticism and Curiosity are these four ways. Humility will help to know more there is to know and understand limits of your knowledge. It will also give the perspective for others’ opinion and the reason behind it. Feedback thereby positive comparison from/with others will help to know what you lack and focus on to build upon it. Criticism will help you to catch up with experts (given that they are free from Dunning-Kruger Effect!) and Curiosity for everything will help you to develop new perspectives while keeping your feet on the grounds.

“The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.”
Socrates

(Note-The famous graph used to explain the Dunning-Kruger Effect are not even present in the original publications by D Dunning and J Kruger!)

References and Further Reading:

Exposing the imposter within

“Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.”

– Maya Angelou

I remember our school time fun moment which used to happen during the declaration of test results. The response to the results declaration was hilariously different and characteristic for the party of boys and party of girls.

You will find that person (mostly in girls but boys are not exception to this too) who has got 90% (well above average but not as good as topper of the class) would be in a serious pressure and sad about his/her marks, on the other hand there is one person (definitely a boy here) who has secured just passing marks and is in cloud nine, seventh heaven and has already planned how he is going to celebrate this; To further add to this joy, he now knows that his best friend has passed ( by teacher’s and God’s grace!!!) with the grace marks. Now there is no space to contain such victorious joy. (One more funny thing which spices up this event is that the boy is confident and aware that his selectively written answers were sufficient enough for him to pass and girl/boy were shocked for not getting enough marks for such thorough answers!!) Man, those days were fun!

The sad thing was that those who had performed well enough were not considering themselves successful enough.

There are some moments in our lives as we grow up where people know that we are master of the art but we still think that this is only because of sheer luck, chance an anybody can easily replace you. It is just a matter of time.

Although you know that you are master of your art but still you think that there are somethings which can go wrong. These are the exact moments when you also think that if this is done right, it will be only because of the other external factors but not your competences or your hold on the art. You feel like at any moment someone will easily replace you and expose you as a fraudulent person who just pretended to have mastery over that art.

Albert Einstein, one of the smartest peoples the world has ever seen had following opinion about himself:

“The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler”

– Albert Einstein

The reality is that the lifework of Albert Einstein is so valuable and beyond the general comprehension of normal human brain. Even today, many years after his absence we are learning new things from his already established ideas.

Will you call this the humility of a scholar because of the achievement the ultimate knowledge?

Maybe Yes or maybe No.

There similar examples of great people who just consider themselves lucky to excel in their careers and consider themselves fraud. They are sure that sometimes this whole game will be exposed to the public and people will see that these people were just pretending to be successful. And master of their art. There is also one ideology called “Fake it, until you make it!” (Although further discussion on this will deviate from this topic)

Agatha Christie- the best-selling author of detective novels, the novels which outsold even the bible and Shakespearean writings had following opinion about her penmanship:

“I don’t know whether other authors feel it, but I think quite a lot do- that I’m pretending to be something that I’m not, because even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author.”

– Agatha Christie

Will you still call this the humility of true knowledge, wisdom?

There is one interesting concept in psychology called the Imposter Syndrome which deals with such feelings. Imposter Syndrome loosely refers to a person’s feeling of not being worthy, undeserving of the accolades from the people.

Imposter Syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persists despite evident success. Meaning even if there are many objective proofs, indicators for the success. Mastery of the person the person still thinks that it is not because of him/her ad discredits himself/herself. This person thinks that he/she she is just an impersonator, actor or some fraud acting of having the success or the skills. People with Imposter syndrome finds it difficult to accept their achievements, digesting people’s praise is difficult for them and always in a fear that maybe they will be exposed in a really bad way.

The Imposter syndrome was first identified by Dr. Pauline Rose Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes in their study on successful women. Maybe that is why in many believe that Imposter syndrome is observed more in successful women which is wrong. Later on, after exhaustive studies on different groups, it is found that Imposter syndrome can be found everywhere and is somewhat strong in underrepresented groups.

There are two important things to understand about imposter syndrome:

1) Highly skilled, highly knowledgeable people think that the others already know what they know so there is nothing special about what they know hence anyone can replace them easily. They are “that special” in the way others perceive them.

2) It is not just observed in high achieving and successful people only; Every one of us doubts themselves in their minds.

Everyone of us thinks that we are always on people’s radar or some spotlight where we are the focal point of everyone’s attention.

It is actually due to the difference between what we know about ourselves by our thoughts, our ideas, our fantasies, our fetishes, our guilty pleasures and what people know about ourselves by looking at us, seeing us doing things.

There is Japanese Proverb saying that:

“You have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone.”

Nobody wants to portray themselves as failures, nobody wants to expose those awkward failures in front of everyone and hence they try to safeguard their “Dark Secrets”. Hence, consider themselves fraud. We are the only one who know how exactly dark and gory our character is, hence we under-calculate ourselves.

But, to put in simple words- “Nobody cares what you are doing”. The funny thing is that everyone else is also thinking themselves at the focal point of people around themselves. Everyone is in spotlight, under radar of their own worlds. The moment you realize that how deeply everyone is sunk in their own life that they don’t even care about or have time to look into other people’s lives is the moment when you understand that it happens with everyone.

Types of Imposter Syndrome

There are five different types of Imposter Syndrome

The Perfectionists – These are the people who are always aiming for perfection, setting excessively high goals thereby not achieving them and under-calculating themselves. They think that they could have done it better. This can be eliminated by accepting that it is not about perfection but about the process. Mistakes, imperfections are part of life and cannot be eliminated at once by “perfect” way, “perfect” technique, “perfect” timing.
The Expert– The expert type think that they will never know everything there is to know hence underestimate what they already know. This can be eliminated by realizing that there is always something new to learn, new perspective to develop in the learning, mastering.
The Natural Genius– This type of peoples feel exposed/ fraud if they think that they are taking longer time than normal to achieve something. They think that it in innate in them do easily complete this task, hence are ashamed of their incompetence. This can be eliminated by being the part of the ongoing process, understanding that not everything can be mastered in a day, realizing the importance of the journey, the process.
The Super wo/man– This type of super persons think that if you have not worked hard to achieve something then you don’t deserve it. (These are the people who will work extra office hours for that validation of promotion! Anyways jokes apart)
The Soloist– These are the ones who feel ashamed to ask for help while achieving something. They feel like, requirement of that external assistance has reduced their worthiness of that achievement.

The causes for the development of imposter syndrome can be found in the type of family upbringing, exposure or shift to completely new work, performance environments, personalities showing low self-esteems, perfectionism, neuroticism, social anxiety.

Eliminating the Imposter in you

The best way to deal with the imposter syndrome is knowing the fact that you are not the center of attention. When one understands that there is no such “spotlight” or radar over us to calculate our fraudulence, then one can become free from the judgements and metering of the achievement thereby accepting the process, the journey.

The other important part is to objectively check your abilities and their contribution to your achievements. The objective comparison will really give you the amount of your influence, your competence in that achievement.

Talk to others, open up, share what you feel. This will surprisingly show that the things you considered as awkward are happened with others too and realizing this will show you how common such things, such beliefs, such feelings are around us. Mistakes, imperfections are part of the process and happen all the time and are more common among people, everyone.

Last but not the least, know that everyone has their unique perspective about the same things which makes them to believe that the thing is special. What perspective helped you to easily understand the thing might be difficult for the other person because of lack of that perspective and its opposite is also true. Understand the perspectives of your peers, people around you and constructively have a feed-back in the process which will give you the awareness that you not the only one who thinks the way you think.

After all we are all the same but unique in a way.

(Also in later stages of life, nobody (including you) cares about how many marks you secured in tests, :D)

“It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not.”

– Denis Waitley