The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect; is named after two American social psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger. In 1999, they conducted a study which concluded that incompetence does not only produce poor performance, but also the inability to recognise that one’s performance was poor.The American political scientist Ian Anson has explored the presence of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in politics. He headed a study published in the journal Political Psychology in April 2018. Anson devised a method to apply the theory of the Effect to the subject of political knowledgeability.
He floated a questionnaire through which he quizzed 2,606 adults, asking them various questions about American politics. After thoroughly evaluating the responses, he concluded that those who performed worse were more likely to overestimate their performance. According to Anson, partisan dispositions taken by competing political parties intensifies the Effect.
Information provided by the parties is often biased and concocted to strengthen their narratives. But this information is treated as being authentic by a lot of their supporters, especially by those with little knowledge.
In the face of information coming from an opposing party and its adherents, supporters become even more partisan and overconfident about information coming from their party of choice. This, despite the fact that flawed information and knowledge is regularly debunked. But the debunking process is often perceived as a politically motivated way to falsify a ‘truth’.