You're not as smart as you think you are (sorry)

Why confidence often outweighs performance

On a scale of 1 to 10 how confident are you in your ability to answer the following questions (10 = very confident; 1 = I haven’t a clue):

1. What is the capital of France?

2. In what year was the Battle of Hastings?

3. What is the world’s largest land mammal?

4. What was the middle name of Wolfgang Mozart?

5. In which year was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

6. Which actor starred in The Matrix?

7. How many countries are there in Europe?

8. In which year did the storming of the Bastille take place?

9. How many states are there in the United States?

10. How many countries are there in Africa?

It’s likely that some of the answers will come instantly to mind. However, some you might not know at all, while others you might know you know but still be unable to access the information - you might be able to see the face of the actor from The Matrix or list some other films they’ve been in but still fail to recall their name (Keanu Reeves). In other words, there is a clear destination, even if that destination is “I don’t know.’

If you’re from the United States, the answer to question 5 (1776) might be easier than the answer to question 2 (1066). Question 8 (1789) will be easier for French people. Knowledge is, therefore, often based on individual context. The US is a country made up of 50 states, but Europe is a continent with between 44 and 51 countries, depending on how we define Europe (The United Nations recognise 44). The European Union has 27 members, but the EU is a political and economic bloc, not a continent. Africa is a continent of 54 countries (as of 2024). But I digress.

Now, again, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are your that you can explain the following topics:

Climate change

Vaccines

Depression

Memory

This is a different type of task because it requires you to explain rather than simply answer. You may have opted for 10 on some of these, but I suspect your confidence is lower than for the first list.

It might also surprise you to know that you’ve probably over-estimated your ability to explain the topics in the second list. You may, of course, have specialist knowledge in one or more of these subject areas - I’m quite confident in my ability to explain memory (or at least specific aspects of memory) because I’ve been studying it, teaching it or writing about it for around 25 years.

What we probably have is a shallow understanding of many of these topic, even though we might think we have deep knowledge. If we try to explain them to someone, we rapidly become aware of our failings.

In studies, most people believe they know more about a topic than they actually do - a phenomenon known as the illusion of explanatory depth. Facts (list 1) have a specific end point - we know what the answer will look like and we immediately know that we can answer it.

However, when we are expected to explain something, we often have little idea of how that explanation will look like in the end, so we overestimate our knowledge of it.

The illusion of explanatory depth is a good example of the differences between shallow and deep learning. Shallow learning creates the illusion of knowledge, we begin to believe we know more than we actually do.

We certainly witness this in others, but rarely stop to think about our own levels of understanding. During the COVID-19 pandemic it did seem that there were suddenly an awful lot of virology experts, especially ones who didn’t appear to have any training or experience in virology. They truly believed that they had deep knowledge of diseases and global pandemics, vaccine manufacture and testing, yet their own understanding was far removed from what those who had spent decades studying and researching these areas. Indeed, so high was this confidence that they would enter into arguments with people who were overwhelmingly considered experts.

Laypeople rarely have to offer full explanations for most of the phenomena that they think they understand. Unlike many teachers, writers, and other professional “explainers,” laypeople rarely have cause to doubt their naïve intuitions. They believe they can explain the world they live in fairly well.

They are novices in two respects. First, they are novice “scientists”—their knowledge of most phenomena is not very deep. Second, they are novice epistemologists—their sense of the properties of knowledge itself is poor and potentially misleading. In other words, they don’t fully understand the meaning of knowledge and may, for example, confuse opinions with objective facts.

Many types of testing, such as multiple choice tests, rely on shallow knowledge (the first list), while tests requiring extended answers require deeper cognitive processing. That’s not to say that shallow learning serves no purpose, it simply depends on what it is we are learning and our wider goals.