Episode 32: Decoding the D-K Effect with Annette Zapp, CSCS*D
Ironically, the less competent you are, the more confident you'll feel about your level of expertise. This phenomenon, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, is why career firefighters feel compelled to lecture their coworkers on the benefits of cold plunges or Wendler 5-3-1 after reading one article or listening to one podcast.
Knowing about Dunning-Kruger might assist a firefighter or a fire department when choosing an outside educator or coach. Hear about D-K and the red flags you can look for in today's episode!
So what, now what?
Picking the right professional for your fire department or yourself can be tricky. But if you listen carefully, they'll tell you everything you need to know!
Dunning-Kruger Effect
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Annette: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, it's AZ with Fire Rescue Wellness, and I am back with solo episode number 32 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. And today I hope that I'm going to be able to help you a little bit with choosing a coach for either yourself or potentially for your department because here's the frustrating thing.
If I don't know how to fix my car, I obviously don't know much about fixing cars, and so therefore, how can I, someone who doesn't know about fixing cars, put my finger on the right mechanic who actually has the knowledge, skills, and abilities to fix my. Have you ever thought about it? Not all mechanics are created equal, just like every other [00:01:00] profession.
There's good ones and there's bad ones. There's honest ones and there's shysters. And so how do I, as someone that clearly doesn't know anything about fixing my car, how do I go about picking the appropriate mechanic? Now I'm a health and Wellness expert. My ability to pick another Health and Wellness expert is pretty good because I already know about the field, but most of our firefighters and our fire departments who are looking for a health and Wellness expert are in the same situation that I am when I'm looking for a mechanic.
Here's an even better example. My refrigerator is all kinds of broken. You know, you're supposed to be able to poke that little button on the outside of the fridge and the water comes out. [00:02:00] Yeah, my water dispenser isn't working, so I did the basic things. I tried another new water filter that was a disaster.
Somehow. I built up pressure on the line and blew the water filter off. Luckily, I didn't break anything, but, so what do I? I go to YouTube and I start looking at videos. But how do you determine if the person on the other end of that video knows what they're talking about? It's frustrating. But today I'm gonna hopefully help you with a little bit of information on the back end that can help you on the front end.
So I wanna tell you something. Or a little something about a psychological phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, not Freddie Kruger. Dunning-Kruger. And if you were to draw out a graph with your little [00:03:00] x axis on the bottom, your Y axis along the side, and then you put competence along the bottom and confidence along the side.
What you will see is that the most confident people are generally the ones that are the least competent. Now, I'm not great at explain, uh, explaining graphs, so I'm gonna put a picture link in the bio. But what the Dunning Krueger effect says is it's a cognitive bias that can make people who know the very least about something think they know the most.
So think of it, you're sitting around the fire station table. You're having lunch and someone starts talking about what, whatever, cold showers, creatine, diets, exercise. [00:04:00] Most of these people are not health and Wellness experts. Most of these people don't know an awful lot. Most of these people maybe read one article or saw something in the newspaper, and they feel like they have a level of expertise to counsel other people.
Interestingly, this Dunning-Kruger effect is commonly observed in the bottom 25% of people. So the 25% of people that know the least are the most confident; the least competent, are the most confident. And if you surveyed a whole group of people, so let's survey a hundred mechanics, you get what's called the above average effect.
You will get consistently more than 50% of those mechanics saying that they're above average. The math doesn't [00:05:00] work out. It's not possible. So this Dunning-Kruger effect tends to occur because there's sort of this lack of self-awareness. I went to a weekend course on name it massage, and now I'm a massage expert.
I don't know what I don't know. There's something that's the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect that's called imposter syndrome . This is when people who tend to actually know a lot about a given topic start to feel like they don't know enough or they, they discount their level of ability and would report that they are less competent than they actually are.
So, how can we utilize our knowledge of this Dunning-Kruger effect to help us choose a coach? That's the whole point. To help us choose a [00:06:00] dietician, to help us choose a mental health professional. So I'm gonna talk about some red flags to watch out for. Red flag number one, speaking in absolutes. This is the only way that you can do X, Y, Z.
This is the only thing that'll work. Nothing else will be successful. Those are absolutes. If you have someone also talking to you or shoulding, I call it ‘shoulding’ on you, you should do this. You need to do. You can see that as a red flag because someone who actually has a lot of knowledge on a topic and a lot of competence on a topic understands that there is nuance involved.
[00:07:00] Pretty much if you surveyed a whole bunch of people and said, how do you lose weight? Most of them would come up with the answer, move more, eat less. But if that's all there was to it, no one would be struggling with their weight. If you surveyed a hundred people and said, how do you build muscles? Most of them would come up with: you need to do resistance training.
But if it was that simple, no one would have any issues building muscle. Right. These things are nuanced, and the more you know about something, the more you realize it. So you do absolutely want to feel confident that the person helping you can help you. [00:08:00] I get it. It's frustrating to get the answer: “It depends.
It depends. It depends. It depends.” You want an answer!!I understand that, but someone saying it depends, and then going on to elaborate, what it depends on is likely going to be able to help you much more effectively than someone that says, this is the way it's done, it's my way or the highway. There's no other way to do it.
The other thing is, You want someone that has enough confidence to be able to say to you, “I've got you. We will figure this out.” Think of it, if you are a patient with chest pain, do you want a medic saying, “I've got you. We're gonna figure this [00:09:00] out. We're gonna take great care of you.” or do you want the medic that is freaking out and has no idea what to do and is throwing things all over the floor?
I'm gonna guess you want the medic that says, “I've got you. We're gonna figure this out.” And that's the same type of personality that I would definitely look for in a coach. So keeping this short as usual, but I wanna just sort of wrap up on one. There are several different types of health and Wellness professionals that can assist you or your department, either you individually or your department as a whole.
Those individuals, I feel strongly are athletic trainers, physical therapists, strength and conditioning coaches, dieticians and mental health professionals. Are there other professionals out there that can. I truly believe yes, [00:10:00] but when you're going to the well of professionals and you're not quite sure what credentials that you're looking for, those are at least a really good place to start.
Then you talk to the person, find out about their experience, what types of people have they worked with, how long have they have been in business? Where are they on that Dunning-Kruger curve? And do they make you feel like “I've got you! We will figure this out.” Thanks for listening and happy Friday. This has been AZ and I am out.
