World's Best Driver

On Tuesday evening I was leaving my daughter's tennis match and headed to get food before going home. I got behind a slow driver that was obviously confused about where they were going and it was annoying. I followed them all the way to the drive-through, where this must have been their first experience with a drive-through line as well. I tried to get over it and headed home, only to get behind another car that refused to go faster than 15 mph BELOW the speed limit. I was stuck behind them almost the whole way home and I was furious. Bad driving has always been a pet peeve of mine. So much, that I would work driving questions into my history tests as a teacher.

That evening I read about something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Put simply, it's the psychological belief that you know something that you really don't. Because of this feeling, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are above average or superior at something, when in fact we are just average, or maybe worse. When I read this, I realized that my judgment of everyone's driving is based on the fact that I believe myself to be the world's best driver. Everyone slower than me is an idiot with nowhere to be and everyone faster than me is reckless. Apparently, I'm not alone in this belief though. It's actually VERY common and can be seen in everything around us, especially our jobs.

Studies show that close to 50% of people believe that they are greatly superior in their jobs when compared to their peers. It doesn't take a math teacher to know that everyone can't be better than most. Most people have to be average. That's how statistics work. The crazy thing is that when we study this effect more deeply, we find that often the people that do the worst at a job, tend to overrank themselves the most. Inversely, the people that are actually the best, tend to under rank their abilities. This is true in assessing leadership, raising kids, constructing an argument and lots of other things, including driving. People with a little bit of knowledge tend to think that they know a lot more than they actually do.

So how good are you as a teacher? What are you really good at and what do you just think you're good at? Chances are, you don't actually know unless you're willing to look at data that shows you. And you can't pick and choose which data to accept and which to ignore. Great teachers are more likely to be humble and constantly seeking to do better and learn more. Average or below-average teachers, just proclaim that they have this teaching thing down. That's an important thing to know when we are talking about personal growth related to your strengths and weaknesses. We can all be better than we are if we are willing to accept a growth mindset and let go of the voice in our brains that fills us with confidence.

Maybe I'm not that great of a driver after all.