WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THIS?
Prelude to: Measurable BRAIN ABNORMALITIES in PSYCHOPATHS and the DUNNING-KRUGER TRIAD
In this 3rd update in this series (see previous installments included below), I review research showing that people with what I have termed the “DUNNING-KRUGER TRIAD” display measurable abnormalities in brain function.
The next update in this series will be a video review of the research cited below; so be sure you are subscribed to receive the email notifications.
As a centerpiece to this discussion, I will review the following publication:
Muller A, Sirianni LA, Addante RJ. Neural correlates of the Dunning-Kruger effect. European Journal of Neuroscience 2021 Jan;53(2):460-484
My video review of the above-mentioned article will be available later this week; be sure you are subscribed to receive the new video and article in your email.
Meanwhile see the updated sections below which detail why this is strategically (safeguard your money) and socially (safeguard your sanity) important!!!
WHY DO I CARE ABOUT THIS?
My interest in and interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon are that it represents a mild form of neurogenic (brain-derived) psychopathy, and I will show the neurophysiologic evidence of this.
We all have to gain some expertise in the topic of psychopathy because our international politics and interpersonal interactions are filled with psychopathic individuals, as these people comprise at least 10% of the population. Another 65% of the population are zombies that will robotically follow orders, get along to go along, and harm others on any whim of justification.
THE RESEARCH SHOWS that 65% of the population are untrustworthy zombies and 10% are overt or covert psychopaths/sociopaths; that gives us 75% of the population—3 per 4 free-living people in the population—are potentially dangerous. As such, you and I are interacting with psychopaths and sociopaths every single day of our lives when we interact with any group of people. This is not hyperbole, overstatement, or fear-mongering; these percentages are based on replicated research in psychology and psychiatry.
My personal interest in this stems from my experience of noticing that people who are incompetent in their work (eg, incompetent attorneys, accountants, academicians) are not simply “innocently incompetent” but rather their incompetence is haughty and malicious. Given that people with Dunning-Kruger phenomenon are not simply passivelyignorant but actively defensive and resistant, I think they represent an early/mild stage of antisocial psychopathy, as their selective self-blindness leads them to think they are entitled to rights, positions, and possessions which they have not earned and (most commonly) cannot manage. Just because they are incompetent and intellectually defective does not mean that they don’t have desires for power and possessions held by other people; since they do not have the cognitive power for legitimate mastery and talent, their only route to prestige is usurpation and manipulation.
Note that I very importantly differentiate here between two different forms of power: 1) prestige—macro(big)power over groups, and 2) manipulation—micro(small)power over individuals. Psychopathic narcissists are famous for this duality: they either seek positions of power when politically or socially included for bigger targets, or they seek power through manipulation and control if their targets are on the smaller interpersonal scale. This is demonstrated by dichotomy of the big flashy extroverted narcissists who seek to dominate organizations (ranging from offices, to businesses to countries) to the small-scale quiet introverted narcissists who prey on friends, family, and clients, controlling and gaslighting them for personal gain or psychotic “supply”—the sadistic pleasure received from deceiving and manipulating others. All macro(big)manipulators have to use micro(small)manipulative techniques in order to build a team of coconspirators (who are usually also psychopathic) because the acquisition and preservation of large-scale power requires some level of teamwork or “ecosystem” even if those individual team-members are expendable at the whim of the chief psychopath. I first discovered this dynamic in academia when I uncovered an entire “ecosystem of corruption” that stemmed from and centered around two men—the University President and Vice-President of Academics—who destroyed the decades-long stability and intellectual infrastructure of a wonderful school in order to steal money from the students (eg, pocketing scholarship funds as “performance bonuses”) and sadistically torture the remaining faculty—I published my experiences in 2024 in a short book titled Administrative Anarchy in American Academia, available on Amazon and provided in PDF format (for free!) here below:
We all have to defend ourselves from human predators.
The first step is acknowledging their existence—ranging from 10% hunting predators to 65% willing coconspirators.
The second step (mostly described in this article) is recognizing their behaviors and patterns so that we can identify and protect ourselves when we encounter the inevitable psychopaths.
Specifically in this conversation about Dunning-Kruger: Once you realize that intellectual/performative incompetence is a hard-wired feature of these self-deceptive people, then my/your observation of intellectual/performative incompetence is the first clue—before any manipulation has occurred or damage is done—that we are dealing with someone on the psychopathic spectrum.
The third step—that I learned and described in 2025 after a new accountant stole more than $15,000 from me—is that we have to have defensive strategies in place because reliance on “recognition” is already too late; our defense has to be present and proactive before the game begins, especially given that psychopaths/narcissists are famous for being charismatic and convincing liars.
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WHY SHOULD YOU CARE ABOUT THIS?
My interest in and interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon is that it represents a mild form of neurogenic (brain-derived) psychopathy. These people are not simply pitiful and innocently inept; they are primed and programed to become psychopathic predators because they feel entitled to more than they have earned and are thus already on the slippery slope starting with manipulation and deception and ending at sadism.
You are at a juncture with two options:
OPTION 1: You have to take a few minutes to study and understand the pattern in order to have it in your mental library at the ready so that when you encounter the pattern—in your boss or employee or attorney or accountant or realtor—you will be primed to protect yourself. I am not saying you have to be paranoid—I am saying that you have to be prepared. I am not saying that you have to live in a bunker or a tortoise shell—I am saying that you need to add these patterns and images into your social library unless you want to be prey for a human predator.
OPTION 2: The alternative is to ignore all of this, hope for the best, follow your bliss, and hope that everyone is here on planet Earth to help you be happy and share the joy and beauty of existence—good luck with that. Go watch some police videos or true crime documentaries and learn what happens in the real world.
See my video links provided below about my experiences with incompetent attorneys, accountants, academicians.
2026 DUNNING-KRUGER TRIAD: 1) incompetence, 2) unawareness, and 3) defensive arrogance—this triad programs some people to feel entitled to override others, making them manipulative, dangerous
Update: The page below was originally published in October 2022 and was edited, clarified, embellished, redefined and republished in January 2026.
Here are my 3 components (listed below) and progressive levels characterizing Dunning-Kruger people: for this reason, I have come to predict that incompetent people are potentially dangerous, and when I have to interact with someone who later shows themself to be incompetent, I immediately start looking for the accompanying arrogance and potential entitlement and risk.
I am sure that most adults have heard of this phrase “Dunning-Kruger” so here I will provide 1) the common explanation, 2) additional details, 3) some of my own experiences especially with accountants and attorneys and academic administrators, and 4) the original PDF publication (at the bottom of the page).
Dunning-Kruger effect/syndrome: This concept derives from two Cornell Researchers who published their elegant study in 1999 in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Common shorthand explanation: “when people are too stupid to know that they are stupid.”
Incompetence + blindness + arrogance: People who lack 1) the ability to gain competence and who also lack 2) the ability to accurately perceive their own incompetence are demonstrating a “metacognitive” defect. They cannot see what they are doing wrong, and they therefore assume they are doing everything correctly. Notice that this is not the same response as we would expect in an uninformed-inexperienced student, who—even though not skilled or knowledgeable—can see and acknowledge his/her errors and continue to work hard to gain mastery; this honesty and humility are exactly what is missing among people who are later described as having “Dunning-Kruger syndrome.” As such, a good way to think about Dunning-Kruger syndrome is that it combines 1) incompetence, 2) lack of self-awareness, and 3) lack of humility to see one’s shortcomings—this latter problem of arrogance also gives these people an unfounded and inappropriate sense of entitlement over other people, which has the potential to be dangerous.
Additional details: here are the two additional parts that most people miss if they have not read the complete publication:
Resistance to learning, unteachable: Dunning-Kruger people are not simply ignorant, but when they are shown their errors, they do not incorporate the experience in order to improve. They stay stuck.
Dunning-Kruger people (DKpeople) are not simply ignorant, but they are defensively ignorant. This—in my opinion and experience—is where incompetence becomes dangerous; because these DKpeople cannot see their faults, yet they still think they are correct and entitled, so that the only solution available to them is to assume the right to status and power that they don’t deserve, have not earned, and cannot manage.
Some of my own experiences especially with accountants and attorneys and academic administrators: These are numerous and detailed in various videos, so I have provided the links below.
Original PDF publication: “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999 is provided below, at the end of this page
A good way to think about Dunning-Kruger syndrome is that it combines 1) incompetence, 2) lack of self-awareness, and 3) lack of humility to see one’s shortcomings—this latter problem of arrogance also gives these people an unfounded and inappropriate sense of entitlement over other people, which has the potential to be dangerous.
SHORT STORY: My childhood friend became Dunning-Kruger, assuming he had social clout that he never earned
Childhood friendships don’t necessarily translate into Adult Friendships—nor should we expect them to.
I had a recent negative experience with a long-term friend that didn’t actually surprise me because I have observed how he has changed over the past few years. My friend had gone from being somewhat of a lifelong drifter (albeit a pleasant drifter) to someone who now thinks of himself as being highly successful, accomplished, and elite because he married someone with big money. His behavior finally became unacceptable even if it was perfectly predictable given his trajectory, so I ended the friendship, blocked his phone number, and called it done: thanks for the memories—CHAO!
My friend had become Dunning-Kruger on many levels, because he thought that marrying someone who had made money meant that he was capable of same (benign error) and that this catapulted him into the social-intellectual-financial elite of humanity (bigger error) and that he could now mistreat people at his whim (dangerous error). Like I’ve said before among other lessons learned, “In societies that praise money, rich people are too-commonly assumed to be good, pure, and truthful and somehow ‘better than other people.’”
I learned that childhood friendships don’t necessarily translate into adult friendships—nor should we expect them to. For childhood friendships, we are mostly looking for fun/companionship and acceptance, while adult relationships are more complex because our needs, wants, expectations, and standards have changed at 50 years-of-age from what they were at 15 years-of-age.
Of course, I reflected on the events for several days, and tried to understand how what happened fit into my understanding of fallacies, mistakes, etc. His behavior actually did not fit either fallacy (see recent video) nor stupidity per se (see previous model, now updated below), so that I had to review the Dunning-Kruger syndrome/effect and also update the diagram provided toward the end of this page.
Dunning-Kruger triad= 1) incompetence, 2) unawareness, and 3) arrogance, entitlement which might become dangerous, or at least manipulative
Some people demonstrate *unintentional* incompetence coupled with an inability to learn from their mistakes and from additional training/education; these people are commonly referred to has having Dunning-Kruger Syndrome (or demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect) per the classic 1999 publication by Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which showed that:
Some people are “too stupid to know how stupid they are.”
They actually become more incompetent with additional training/education because their ego defenses block them from integrating new information and trap them in cycles of defending their previous positions and actions.
My extension is the social implication of incompetence+unawareness: When people are too dumb to succeed and too arrogant to admit their shortcomings, their only means for satisfying their desires is to steal from others, in various ways.
In summary: Dunning-Kruger = arrogance + incompetence/ignorance, especially incompetence/ignorance that gets worse with time, which is the opposite of what occurs with normal-healthy people, who learn more skills and information with time and who generally improve their abilities to self-reflect and self-correct.
Here are my 3 components (listed below) and progressive levels characterizing Dunning-Kruger people: for this reason, I have come to predict that incompetent people are potentially dangerous, and when I have to interact with someone who later shows themself to be incompetent, I immediately start looking for the accompanying arrogance and potential entitlement and risk:
1. LEVEL ONE—FRUSTRATING: In normal circumstances with someone who is Dunning-Kruger but not psychopathic/antisocial/violent, their Dunning-Kruger is something of a frustrating or almost-laughable inconvenience—we don’t have to accept their behavior but at least the danger level is low. The combination of arrogance + inability to reflect/integrate = highly frustrating for everyone other than the chief actor.
“Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of a task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.” Wikipedia
2. LEVEL TWO—MANIPULATIVE: But what if that same person with Dunning-Kruger syndrome is also mildly psychopathic? They will probably be manipulative and socially/emotionally harmful to others. If you see this combination, then the best advice is to leave, move, get away.
3. LEVEL THREE—DANGEROUS: What if they are more psychopathic? Then they are a life-and-death physical threat to others. The combination of arrogance + inability to reflect/integrate + willingness to be violent/ruthless = recipe for disaster. In fact, if you look at the basic profile of most serial killers, their psychographic pattern is exactly entitlement + un(self)reflective + ruthless. If you want to see a real-world example of this combination, you can see several news items and video documentaries on Daniel Wozniak, the charismatic actor who became a double killer simply in order to pay for a short vacation with his wife.
Perhaps a sequence of severity is as follows:
Ignorance can be innocent.
Incompetence is problematic, because by definition it means that someone is underperforming for a role that they could and should be prepared for; the team/organization/nation/society is being held back, retarded, or harmed because of someone’s underperformance.
Stupidity among adults is commonly self-serving in some way (which might be relatively/temporarily benign) or it may be strategic, in which case it is intentional and therefore designed to harm other people.
Dunning-Kruger is reckless and non(self)correcting, so it is either going to be a small problem or a big problem, depending on the situation and the person’s tendency for ruthlessness.
3. Some of my own experiences especially with accountants and attorneys and academic administrators: These are numerous and detailed in various videos, so I have provided the links below.
4. My highlighted annotated PDF of Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999 is provided below for convenience (the article is also widely available on the internet)
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