David Alan Dunning (born 1960) is an American social psychologist and professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

. He is a retired professor of psychology at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

Education

He received his BA from

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

in 1982 and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1986, both in psychology.

Research

Dunning has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and commentaries. He is well known for co-authoring a 1999 study with graduate student Justin Kruger after reading about the 1995 Greater Pittsburgh bank robberies in which the perpetrators wore

lemon juice The lemon (''Citrus'' × ''limon'') is a species of small evergreen tree in the ''Citrus'' genus of the flowering plant family Rutaceae. A true lemon is a hybrid of the citron and the bitter orange. Its origins are uncertain, but some ...

instead of masks, thinking it would make them invisible to

security camera A closed-circuit television camera is a type of surveillance camera that transmits video signals to a specific set of monitors or video recording devices, rather than broadcasting the video over public airwaves. The term "closed-circuit televisi ...

s. This study showed that people who performed the lowest at certain tasks, such as judging humor, grammar, and logic, significantly overestimated how good they were at these tasks. This study has since given rise to what is known as the

Dunning–Kruger effect The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Some researcher ...

, a

cognitive bias A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm (philosophy), norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the ...

in which people mistakenly assess their

cognitive ability Cognitive skills are skills of the mind, as opposed to other types of skills such as motor skills, social skills or life skills. Some examples of cognitive skills are literacy, self-reflection, logical reasoning, abstract thinking, critical th ...

as greater than it is. The study also found that people who performed slightly above average at identifying how funny a given joke was tended to be the most accurate at assessing how good they were at the assigned tasks, and that those who performed the best tended to think they performed only slightly above average. In 2012, Dunning told ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' that he "thought the paper would never be published" and that he was "struck just with how long and how much this idea has gone viral in so many areas."

Positions

Dunning is the executive officer of the

Society for Personality and Social Psychology A society () is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. So ...

and the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology. He has also served as an associate editor of the ''

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of social and personality psychology. The edi ...

''.

Awards

In 2021, Dunning was listed by Stanford University as being in the world's top 2% most cited psychological scientists.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunning, David A. 1960 births 20th-century American psychologists 21st-century American psychologists American social psychologists Cornell University faculty Ig Nobel laureates Living people Michigan State University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni University of Michigan Department of Psychology faculty