Summary Of We Are All Confident Idiots By David Dunning

In 2014, Cornell psychology professor, David Dunning published the article ,”We Are All Confident Idiots”,an informative and persuasive essay upholding the argument that the human race is inclined to overestimate their knowledge when dealing with factual topics. In addition, in this article, Dunning also hypothesizes that the portion of the population that confidently claim they have acquired the information in question may in fact comprehend the bare basics if none at all. In my opinion, Dunning justifies his perspective very effectively through the medium of relatable examples, convincingly credible evidence, provocative diction, and a rather ironically, confident tone.
Moreover, Dunning effectively legitimizes his outlook by utilizing examples
This recurring diction evokes a comically condescending ambience that questions how the reader could not side with Dunning’s argument without being considered “incompetent” themselves. This is the very questioning that makes Dunning argument highly effective through a genius use of psychologist Edward Thorndike’s Halo effect. The halo effect is an occurrence when a person’s overall impression of a person, place, or thing influences that person’s opinion about that entity’s properties,character, or superiority. This phenomenon with Dunning’s article is magnified to a deeper extent through his factual and confident tone which makes his displayed perspective appear to be overtly correct and warranted. An example of this can be found in this article where he states “Unfortunately for all of us, policies and decisions that are founded on ignorance have a strong tendency, sooner or later, to blow up in one’s face”.This quote exemplifies that the tone of the article is assuring and supercilious ,thus imploring the reader to agree with Dunning and his view on the concoction created when ignorance and incompetence are mixed on a daily basis. This method employed by Dunning is effective and somewhat ironic when taking his article’s concept into consideration. Dunning’s article is titled ”We Are All Confident Idiots” and converses widely regarding the argument that people tend to think highly of the knowledge they believe they possess..but don’t. Taking these facts into consideration, one can find irony in the entire article when taking his bitingly condescending diction and confident tone into contemplation. One can only question: “Is he also a confident