I am flattered you came back for day 2 of ‘Foolish Things’ week!

The Ego Whisperer

Beware the person whispering sweet nothings in your ear that happen to coincide with your ego’s weakness.

Overconfidence

I am reading a book right now called ‘The Social Animal – A Story of How Success Happens’. In it the author explains how much of what goes into our success or failures in life are from the unconscious realm, not the conscious.  He spends a lot of time quoting and extrapolating from various academic research studies regarding people’s thinking and behavior. There is one area of the book in particular that is germaine to this quote and that is overconfidence.

Here are a few of the statistics the author, David Brooks, quotes: 

• 90% of drivers believe they are above average drivers.
• 94% of college professors believe they are above average teachers.
• Golf pros believe they sink 70% of their 6 foot putts.  They actually make only 54%.
• 50% of Penn State students said they would object if they heard a sexist comment in their presence.  When it happened, only 16% actually objected.
• Those who scored in the bottom quartile on logic and grammar tests were the most likely to overestimate their abilities.
• When given questionnaires about their industry (to test competence), Advertising professionals thought 90% of their answers were correct.  Actually, they were wrong 61% of the time. Meanwhile the computer professionals thought they got 95% correct on the questionnaire.  They were wrong 80% of the time.
• 99% of all those tested (in the questionnaire mention immediately above) overestimated their success.

Inocculation

The point of these statistics is to show that we are all going to overestimate how smart and competent we are.  We can all be fools about ourselves, in other words. The more self-aware we can become about where we truly are in the scheme of things the better protection we have against those who would try to manipulate us and our easily fooled egos. 

Drawing by Marty Coleman, who is 90% correct 50% of the time when 35% of the people aren’t among the 99% and 20% are among the 47%.

Quote by Edward G. Bulwer-Litton, 1803-1873, English writer and politician. He is the originator of the famous opening line for a novel, “It was a dark and stormy night.”  He also came up with “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Trivia question of the day:

What is the name of the literary competition (now in its 31 year) that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels?

Answer tomorrow

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