Posts Tagged: "Dunning-Kruger Effect"

Patent professionals encounter many different personality types working with their colleagues and inventors. On one end, there are those who do great work but lack confidence in their abilities, and on the other there are those who overestimate their abilities and lack the skills to do an efficient job. Those who are competent, but lack confidence, often believe others are smarter and more capable then they are. This can be particularly problematic when that individual is an engineer or scientist hired by a company to invent, or even an independent inventor who toils for years thinking that what they are doing just isn’t good enough. Building confidence in those who have creative abilities seems like a difficult task, but it can be even more challenging to work with someone who believes they are great at what they do when they clearly lack abilities, or what they do create is a modest improvement, or even trivial advance that the law is unlikely to recognize as a patentable invention. These individuals typically are completely unaware that they lack the necessary skills, they overestimate their contributions, and often become extremely defensive or even angry when others do not seem to appreciate what they consider to be their own brilliance. This phenomenon is not uncommon and has even been given a name by two psychologists who studied how individuals at different ends of the spectrum see themselves and the value of their contributions—the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning–Kruger Effect is based on the principle that, in order to know you are bad at something you must have at least a moderate understanding of it. Thus, when an individual lacks ability in a certain area, they cannot recognize that they are lacking. That is, in order to recognize their deficiencies, they must have at least a moderate understanding of the subject.