SGU Episode 339
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, today is Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Rebecca Watson.
R: Hello everyone.
S: Jay Novella.
J: Hey guys.
S: And Evan Bernstein.
E: Did we miss someone?
J: Where's Bob?
S: Yeah, Bob is on vacation this week.
E: Vacation? I didn't know we get vacations!
(laughter)
E: Nobody told me, six and a half years.
S: You guys do. Occasionally.
E: Lucky guy.
J: I had a pretty cool day today because Bob was on vacation. I got about thirty pictures and one video sent to me from Bob from Disney World.
S: Is that where he is?
R: Aaah, he's in Disney World. I want to go to Disney World.
E: Isn't that the theme?
R: This show sucks.
(laughter)
This Day in Skepticism (0:57)
January 12, 1990 Is the death-date of Dr. Laurence Peter, creator of the Peter Principle, a scientific observation that employees will rise to the level of their incompetence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
S: Well Rebecca, you have an interesting This Day in Skepticism this week.
R: You'd better hope I do, Steve.
S: Yes.
R: And I do! Yes, this podcast is going out on January 14th which is, first of all I want to mention, it's an important Christian holiday, the feast of the ass, so I just want to put that out there.
J: What?
R: It's uh, the feast of the ass...
(laughter)
R: It was a medieval feast that was observed on January 14th, mostly in France apparently and it celebrated a lot of the biblical stories that involve donkeys. So feast of the ass, look it up, real thing.
S: Real but obscure.
R: However, the event that I would actually like to talk about happened on January 12th, and I really want to talk about the person who unfortunately died, January 12th 1990 the world lost a great scientific mind. That of Dr. Lawrence Johnson Peter who gave his name to what we call the Peter Principle. For those of you who are unaware, the Peter principle states that members of a hierarchical organisation will climb the hierarchy until they reach their level of maximum incompetence. And it is the defining principle of most office environments where middle managers flourish despite being completely unable to do their jobs. Now the idea behind the Peter Principle is that the best members of the hierarchy in question are rewarded with promotions. And these rewards take into account the member's competence at his or her current level, but not the level to which he or she is being promoted to. So in 2009, Italian scientists published a computational study that showed that when a hierarchy utilises the promotional system that I've just described, the Peter Principle is inevitable. They also showed that this results in a significant reduction in the efficiency of the organisation. Of course, because you have completely incompetent people at every level. Using game theory, the researchers found that the ideal promotional technique was actually either to promote people at random or to randomly promote the very best and the very worst members in terms of competence.
J: Oh my god.
R: Isn't that crazy? So seeing as that system might actually cause complete chaos in an organisation of real humans, you could also just train people for a position prior to promoting them, which would ensure that they have the required level of competency at the start. So that's the Peter Principle. Unfortunately, Lawrence Peter, Dr. Lawrence Peter died January 12th, 1990.
J: Now, this guy's middle name was Johnson and his last name was Peter.
R: Yes, yes.
J: Just checking.
S: That reminds me of the Dunning Kruger effect which is a distinct effect described by a psychologist, Dunning and Kruger. No relation to uh...
R: Brian.
S: Brian Dunning.
R: Or Freddy.
S: Yeah, to Brian. Yeah, or Freddy Kruger.
(laughter)
E: Freddy Dunning.
S: It essentially says that peoples' incompetence makes them incompetent to detect their own incompetence.
R: Indeed. Yeah, I believe that these two principles work in tandem to create the worst possible office environment.
E: Oh it's like when people have body odour and they don't smell it on themselves but everybody else smells it.
S: (laughing) kind of.
R: Yeah, yeah.
E: That happens.
R: Which also combines with these two principles to make the worst office environment ever.
S: It is also in effect at Dragon Con.
E: (laughs)
J: Most people that have something wrong with them, we're kind of saying now they can't detect it.
R: Well, the Dunning Kruger effect is specifically about incompetence. As is the Peter Principle, is about incompetence.
J: Because I'd put bad breath on that list as well.
R: And with the Peter Principle though, it's not necessary that the person who is incompetent not know that they're incompetent. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who know that they're completely incompetent at their jobs but they soldier on regardless. So it's only when combined with the Dunning Kruger effect that you get the rare, unfortunately not very rare, manager who is completely incompetent and yet is absolutely sure that he or she knows what he or she is doing.
J: It sounds like the TV show The Office.
S: Yeah.
R: And every office I've ever worked in. I'll also mention that Dr. Peter is known for the quip, the noblest of all dogs is the hot dog. It feeds the hand that bites it. That is all.
E: Wow.
R: This day in science.
J: Why thank you, Rebecca.
S: I would point out though that I think the Dunning Kruger effect, this is my speculation, is there really a fundamental difference at the low end of the competency range, or essentially can we generalise from that to say that we're all incapable of truly assessing ourselves? Because we can only assess our own level of knowledge and competence from the perspective of our own knowledge and competence. It's just that it's really obvious in people who are less knowledgeable and competent than you are. But somebody who is more competent and knowledgeable than you would think that the Dunning Kruger effect applies to you. Do you think that's true, or is it really something that is unique to the low end of the competency scale?
R: I don't know, consider that I don't have any idea how to play the violin, and I have knowledge that I can't play it even though I'm completely incompetent at it.
J: (laughs) I'm so incompetent that I can't even follow this conversation.
S: I'm going to answer my own question.
R: You always do.
S: It's an interesting question, I think if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that, although I don't think this is necessarily true, but I do think there's a tendency for greater humility in a way as you learn more, because as you begin to gain knowledge in any area, you go through this phase where you, the first thing you realize is how little you know. And then you progress to the point where you start to feel confident in your knowledge. So I think the Dunning Kruger effect are people who haven't even got to the phase yet where they know how much they don't know.
This Day in Skepticism ( )
January 12, 1990 Is the death-date of Dr. Laurence Peter, creator of the Peter Principle, a scientific observation that employees will rise to the level of their incompetence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
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Segment: Skeptical Quote of the Week Skeptical Quote of the Week "Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge." - Leonardo daVinci
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