The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt.

2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

- The Rawness - http://therawness.com -

Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2

Posted By T. AKA Ricky Raw On July 6, 2011 @ 4:37 AM In Uncategorized | 10 Comments

[This is another long post. However, I find that even if you plan to read this article online, it's much easier to read much if you click to read the printable version [7].] Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy. Nora Ephron In my last post [8], I discussed how the Dunning-Kruger effect [9], which says that incompetent people are too incompetent to grasp just how incompetent they are, helps to explain narcissists and other Cluster B personality disorders [11] too, since personality disorder sufferers also suffer from a type of incompetence: incompetence in the skills needed to become a fully functional adult with healthy adult relationships. I referred to the application of the D-K effect to the area of maturity as The Maturity Paradox. The skills required to be a healthy, functioning adult are competencies in social intelligence, spiritual intelligence and emotional intelligence. Narcissists and other Cluster B personality disorder sufferers lack these competencies, and therefore lack maturity. They are developmentally trapped in a childlike state of maturity. Most articles describing Dunning-Kruger just define it as a phenomenon where incompetent people overrate their own skill levels, underestimate the skill levels of others, and think they have little left to learn, while competent people underestimate their skill levels, overestimate the skill levels of others, and think they have a lot left to learn. This is accurate, but it misses much of the nuances and further implications of the original studies. On the other hand, I actually read both the original Dunning-Kruger 1999 study as well as the follow-up studies by Dunning and Kruger where they responded to critics and elaborated on their findings. After reading all these papers, I came up with 14 important elements of the D-K effect. Most of them are explicitly stated in the papers, some are conclusions I inferred from the findings, and others are personal observations that relate to the study findings. Some of them may seem repetitive or complicated, but each one is subtly different and very important, so make the effort to really understand what each one is saying. The 14 points are as follows: 1. The less competent you are in an area, the less knowledge and experience you believe is needed to be an expert in that area and the more you believe that you have little left to learn. 2. The more competent you become in an area, the more knowledge and experience you believe is necessary to become an expert in that area and the more you believe you have a lot left to learn. 3. Incompetent people tend to overestimate their own skill level and fail to recognize genuine skill in others. 4. Competent people tend to underestimate their own skill level and overestimate the skill levels of others. Because things come easy to them, they believe that other people to some degree find the same things easy as well. 5. When a task is extremely easy, smart people are less likely to have self-doubt and will be more correct at assessing their own performance and skill level than incompetent people. 6. When a task is incredibly hard, incompetent people are more likely to have self-doubt and will be more correct at assessing their own performance and skill level than competent people. 7. What points #5 and #6 show us is that the D-K effect is most applicable in areas easy enough to grasp that a incompetent person thinks they can be good at it, but still difficult enough that a competent person can doubt himself and before he has more to learn. Well call these grey areas. 8. Even in grey areas though, there are exceptions when dealing with the radical extremes of competence and incompetence. A person for example who is so extremely incompetent that they cant even fathom a guess or response to a single question on a test is not likely to be deluded about how he performed. The person who is a super-expert with tens of thousands of hours of training, practice and experience in a skill area is likely to be so hypercompetent that he wont have a shred of doubt as to how well he performed. 9. Incompetent people usually are the same people who have the most to lose from admitting to themselves how incompetent they are. They have a fragile self-image usually and make need to overcompensate with delusions of superiority to cope. Theyre not just unable to
[10]

1 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

recognize inferiority but unwilling to recognize it. Meanwhile the more competent have less motivation to glorify their competence levels and may even be motivated to downplay them due to a less shaky self-image or need to feel superior to others. 10. I feel this is a variation of the Sunk Cost Trap [12]. The more heavily invested you are in something, even if its something intangible like a belief in ones own superiority, the harder it is to cut your losses and let it go, even if its doing you more harm than good. Since these people have invested so much of their self-image into this delusional superiority, they will stick to their guns no matter how much contradicting feedback they get. Theyve reached the point where relinquishing those longtime delusions and facing the truth about themselves would be too crushing to their ego to bear. I think this is why so many people have to hit rockbottom before they can come to terms with their shortcomings and admit to themselves that the way theyve done things their whole lives isnt actually working. Only such extreme, undeniable feedback can shock them to their senses. 11. When the incompetent are made more competent, their ability to assess their own competence as well as the competence of other improves accordingly. 12. The problem with observation #11 though is that even though incompetent people improve at assessing competence in themselves and others once theyre made competent, this is still not grounds to celebrate because making the incompetent more competent is notoriously hard to do. When competent people get feedback about how they actually did in comparison to others, they become more accurate in future self-assessments. Incompetent people on the other hand, even when getting consistent, repeated feedback about how badly theyre doing, still fail to become more confident, still fail to recognize their incompetence, and remain overly confident in predicting future performance. 13. Incompetent people, when faced with evidence of their own incompetence, are more likely to blame external factors like events or people than blame their own incompetence. 14. There is a phenomenon called the Illusion of Confidence [13] which wasnt discussed in the original studies but that I think is very related to D-K effect, where people tend to mistakenly believe that the most confident person is also the most competent. The problem, however, is that the D-K effect actually shows us that its usually the least competent people who are often the most confident. Because of the Illusion of Confidence and the D-K effect, people are often more likely to assume overtly confident yet utterly incompetent people are skilled and that cautious, less overtly confident yet very competent people are less skilled. The good news is that Illusion of Confidence works best in the short-term but in the long-term true competency levels tend to come to light. Lets follow the logic of my last post and think of maturity and immaturity in terms of competency and skills. Maturity is the trait of having sufficient competency in the social, spiritual and emotional intelligence necessary to be a fully-functioning empathetic adult with healthy relationships. Immaturity is the trait that arises from being incompetent in the social, spiritual and emotional skills necessary to be an adult with healthy relationships. Realizing this, lets rephrase the 14 previously listed D-K effect findings in terms of maturity and its accompanying competencies: 1) The less mature you are, the less knowledge and experience you believe is needed to be extremely mature and the more you believe that you have little left to learn. 2) The more mature you become, the more knowledge and experience you believe is necessary to become extremely mature and the more you believe that you have a lot left to learn. 3) Immature people tend to overestimate their own maturity and fail to recognize maturity in others. 4) Mature people tend to underestimate their own maturity and overestimate the maturity level of others. Because the social and emotional skills necessary to becoming a healthy adult (for example empathy) come somewhat easy to them, they believe that other people to some degree find the same maturity skills easy as well. If you ever deal with a narcissist or other Cluster B sufferer, youll notice how convinced they are that other people have nothing to teach them, yet they know whats wrong with everyone else. Even as you see them acting irrational, even though they have a string of failed romantic relationships, careers and friendships and you dont, even though they have trails of burned bridges and a long list of former friends turned enemies and you dont, even though they constantly have emotional meltdowns and drama in their lives and you do not (or at least you didnt until you met them), they will always act as if they are the mature one and you are the immature one and that you must defer to their superior social and emotional skills. They will refuse to admit they have anything to learn, that they might be wrong in assessing a situation,

2 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

that they may be having a misunderstanding, and most of all that you may be the mature one who is actually assessing things correctly and they may be the immature one who cant grasp whats going on. Observations #3 and #4 also explain why narcissists are so good at projective identification. Projective identification is when someone takes a trait that they have and projects that trait onto another person by accusing them of having it, and the other person actually starts believing that they have that trait, even though they didnt, and may even start behaving accordingly. Since Dunning-Kruger predicts that immature people overestimate their own maturity and underestimate the maturity of others, its easy to see why theyd be blind to their own faults and accuse other, more mature people via projection of being the ones who actually have those faults. Meanwhile, since the D-K effect also predicts that the more mature, non-narcissist is likely to underestimate their own maturity and overestimate the maturity of others, it then becomes clear why they are willing to believe that maybe they actually do have the immature traits they are accused of having (identification) and why they also are willing to believe that immature narcissist or drama queen is more mature than he or she actually is. 5) When a task is extremely easy, smart people are less likely to have self doubt and will be more correct at assessing their own skill level than incompetent people. 6) When a task is incredibly hard, incompetent people are more likely to have self-doubt and will be more correct at assessing their own performance and skill level than competent people. 7) What points #5 and #6 show us is that the D-K effect is most applicable in areas easy enough to grasp that a incompetent person thinks they can be good at it, but still difficult enough that a competent person can doubt himself and before he has more to learn. Well call these grey areas. Maturity and adult relationships are perfect example of grey areas. Healthy family, platonic, romantic, and professional relationships obviously arent easy, but they dont feel like nuclear physics either. Most of us can make friends, get jobs of some sort, get married and have kids, etc. Finding romance, being parents and making friends are tasks easy enough to do that an immature person can fool themselves into believing they are better at it than they are, but still difficult enough that a smart person can doubt himself and believe he has a lot more to learn. I worked with a female narcissist who was totally immature and a total train wreck in every area of her life, yet still loved to give unsolicited advice to others, and believed she was a guru of relationship advice. 8 ) Even in grey areas though, there are exceptions when dealing with the radical extremes of competence and incompetence. A person for example who is so extremely immature (devoid in social, spiritual and emotional intelligence) that they have had all their friends abandon them or become bitter enemies, have their personal and professional lives in total undeniable shambles, and are utterly alone and despised is going to have a lot of trouble continuing to delude themselves via the D-K effect. The person who is so incredibly mature and full of social, spiritual and emotional intelligence that they are a total rockstar in every area of their life and are happy, content and practicing unconditional self-acceptance is also likely to not suffer from the D-K effect either and probably is aware of just how mature he is. Thus the best way to avoid falling into the maturity paradox is to become so incredibly mature, meaning to become hypercompetent rockstar in the areas of social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, that you become immune to the D-K effect when evaluating your own maturity and the maturity of others. This is why mastering human nature (social intelligence), cultivating empathy (emotional intelligence) and pursuing enlightened superiority (spiritual intelligence) as completely as you can is so instrumental to healthy adult relationships. 9) Immature people usually are the same people who have the most to lose egowise from admitting to themselves how immature they are. They have a fragile self-image usually and make need to overcompensate with delusions of superiority to cope. Theyre not just unable to recognize immaturity but unwilling to recognize it. Meanwhile the more mature have less motivation to glorify their maturity levels and may even be motivated to downplay their maturity due to a less shaky self-image or need to feel superior to others. 10) I feel this is a variation of the Sunk Cost Trap [12]. The more heavily invested you are in something, even if its something intangible like a belief in ones own maturity, the harder it is to cut your losses and let go of that belief, even if its doing you more harm than good. Since these people have invested so much of their self-image into this delusional superior maturity, they will stick to their guns no

3 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

matter how much contradicting feedback they get. Theyve reached the point where relinquishing those longtime delusions and facing the truth about themselves would be too crushing to their ego to bear. I think this is why so many people have to hit rockbottom before they can come to terms with their shortcomings and admit to themselves that the way theyve done things their whole lives isnt actually working. Only such extreme, undeniable feedback can shock them to their senses. Shrink4men has a great article called Is Your Girlfriend or Wife a Professional Victim [14]? that touches on this dynamic perfectly: She needs to play innocent victim to someones bad guy. Its the foundation of her identityIts impossible to have a loving relationship of equals with a professional victim. She goes through life feeling slighted and angry, never taking responsibility for her actions or life. Good luck trying to talk to her about this. Youll meet with extreme defensiveness and more blaming behaviors. Her only identity is that of victim: If she doesnt believe shes being victimized, then who is she? Someone who treats other people like crap and who is pissing her life away. Its a matter of psychological self-preservation versus ego annihilation. That last sentence captures it perfectly: psychological self-preservation versus ego annihilation. If the immature Cluster B person admits her immaturity to herself and admits the self-image of incredible maturity shes invested so much into is in fact a lie, what does that mean? That shes the one who caused all her own failures by her own immaturity; shes the one who ruined her own marriage through her immaturity; shes the one who caused her coworkers to set her up to get fired because of her own poor social and emotional intelligence because she behaved like an arrogant bitch; shes the one who caused all her failed personal and professional relationships through her own immaturity and lack of empathy; all her ex-friends and ex-lovers who now are her enemies and totally hate her do so not because they were immature but because she was immature, meaning they rightfully hate her rather than wrongfully, and whatever other negative feedback shes gotten. Admitting all that to oneself about oneself is too much for most people to bear, which is why as the negative feedback in the form of life failures continues to mount, they become more rather than less invested in maintaining this delusion about their own maturity. Its the Cluster Bs own sunk-cost trap. 11) When the immature are made more mature, their ability to assess their own maturity as well as the maturity of others improves accordingly. 12) The problem with observation #11, however, is that even though immature people become much better at assessing their own maturity levels and others maturity levels once they are made more competent, the task of making them more mature is very difficult. For example, when mature people get feedback about how they actually did in comparison to others, they become more accurate in future self-assessments. Incompetent people on the other hand, even when getting consistent, repeated feedback about how badly theyre doing, still fail to recognize their incompetence and remain overly confident in predicting future performance. What this means is that if you could make a narcissist or other type of Cluster B sufferer more mature, they would be able to better assess how much emotional, spiritual and social intelligence they lack in themselves as well as see how much more mature other people around them, including you, actually are. This is why so many women try to rehabilitate shitty men and so many men become white knights and Captain Save-A-Hoes. The problem is that even though making a narcissist or drama queen more mature would solve a lot of their problems, its so hard to accomplish that its not worth the effort. Anyone who has ever known a narcissist intimately knows exactly what Im talking about. As described in the earlier paragraph about sunk cost traps, they can get a ton of feedback via real-life bad experiences and negative consequences of their immaturity, yet they still never make the common-sense connection that the only common element in all their problems is them. Their kids hate them, they dont get along with family members, they constantly get passed over for promotions or worse fired, theyre chronically underemployed or unemployed, they alienate people and constantly need to find new friends, they have a string of failed friendships, romances and marriages,yet they keep living their lives the same way, using the same toolbox theyve always used. Insanity is said to be doing the same things over and over again yet expecting different results. Thanks to the D-K effect, narcissists and other Cluster Bs are the poster children for this definition of insanity. 13) Furthermore, when immature people do get negative feedback, they tend to blame external factors like people and events rather than their blaming their own

4 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

immaturity. Again, the Shrink4men article nails it: She blames others and circumstances for her own shortcomings or failures. The professional victim lives in Never-Never Take Personal Responsibility Land, which is bordered to the North by The Land of If Only. This allows her to blame her parents, siblings, co-workers, bosses, professors and you for her life, career and relationships not being as she thinks they should be. Shed be running the business if only her boss recognized her talents. Shed have graduated from culinary school and been wildly successful if her prof hadnt looked at her cross-eyed. Shed have sex with you more often if you did more of x, y, and z. Dont fall for this malarkey, men. Shes right in that theres someone to blame for her sad life. She need only look in the mirror to direct her blame accurately. Simply put, narcissists and drama queens consistently externalize blame and shift it onto others, while never having accountability for their own misfortunes and failures. And finally: 14) Overconfidence in ones own maturity gives illusion of emotional, spiritual and social intelligence that people will buy into in the short-term but will alienate in the long-term as the true immaturity and lack of empathy eventually comes to the surface. This is called the illusion of confidence, and this article discusses how it works [15]: The illusion of confidence represents the way that people value knowledge from a confident person. This would be fine if confidence and knowledge go hand in hand, but in fact there is almost an inverse relationship. A lack of knowledge is, instead, allied to overconfidence. Lack of knowledge leads to confidence, which leads to you being seen as knowledgeable. Lets explore these ideas a little. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the authors of The Invisible Gorilla [16], give several examples of the illusion of confidence They mention studies of groups of people coming together to solve a maths problem. You would expect the group to defer to the person with the greatest maths knowledge, wouldnt you? In fact, the group deferred to the most confident person, regardless of their knowledge. In trials, in 94% of the cases, the final answer given by the group is the first answer suggested, by the most confident person present, regardless if whether it is right or wrong. Which doctor would you rather trust, they ask; the doctor who confidently writes a prescription without any ado, or the one who consults a reference book or online diagnosis system before concluding their diagnosis? The heart says you trust the former for their confidence, the head says you should trust the latter for their use of knowledge. This concept along with DK-effect explains why so many times the more mature non-narcissist person will defer to the judgment of the less mature person such as the narcissist. Its because the social, spiritual and emotional incompetence of the narcissist leads the narcissist to be unjustifiably confident in their own social, spiritual and emotional competence thanks to the D-K effect. Then the illusion of confidence kicks in and the non-narcissist interprets this confidence to mean that the narcissist is actually more mature than he or she actually is. Taking all 14 of these Dunning-Kruger observations into account, and using them to analyze maturity, it becomes easy to see why trying to make narcissists and other immature people understand the error of their ways and trying to give you credit for your own maturity are lost causes. They totally lack the cognitive tools necessary to recognize their own immaturity and correctly assess the maturity levels of others. If they had such cognitive tools, they wouldnt be so immature in the first place. Another aspect of narcissism that is well explained by the D-K effect and the Maturity Paradox is the fact that narcissists and other Cluster Bs is rarely seek help through therapy, yet their victims often do. Being immature and having all the incompetencies that accompany immaturity, narcissists are highly unlikely to think anything is wrong with them and to think that the problem is everyone else. Being somewhat mature and having all the competencies that accompany

5 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

maturity, the victims of narcissists are more likely to emerge from the experience blaming themselves and realizing they have a lot to learn, and therefore are more willing to seek treatment. Recommended Reading: The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us [17] by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons The Power of Persuasion: How Were Bought and Sold [18] by Robert Levine Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life [19] by Linda Martinzez-Lewi Linda Martinez-Lewi, author of the above book, also has a blog with audio pieces and articles about narcissism. You can find it here [20]. When Your Perfect Partner Goes Perfectly Wrong: A Survivors Guide to Loving or Leaving the Narcissist in Your Life [21] by Mary Jo Fay

Article printed from The Rawness: http://therawness.com URL to article: http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/ URLs in this post: [1] The Rawness RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/therawness [2] subscribe via email: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=therawness [3] feel free to donate to the blog.: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgibin/webscr?cmd=_flow& SESSION=UHnyion5raaSr7OyOVlyp53s6yZBPImVGFUV7OILkLRy1AChAofLLa6Efcq& dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8dcbcd55a50598f04d34b4bf5056870803 [4] Rawness fan page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/therawness [5] Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/takarickyraw [6] Twitter: http://twitter.com/ricky_raw [7] if you click to read the printable version: http://therawness.com/raw-conceptsthe-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/ [8] In my last post: http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-part-1/ [9] Dunning-Kruger effect: http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-dunning-krugereffect/ [10] narcissists: http://therawness.com/human-nature-books-disarming-the-narcissist/ [11] Cluster B personality disorders: http://therawness.com/limits-evo-psyc/ [12] the Sunk Cost Trap: http://therawness.com../raw-concepts-sunk-costs/ [13] the Illusion of Confidence: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/06/29/theillusion-of-confidence/ [14] Is Your Girlfriend or Wife a Professional Victim: http://shrink4men.wordpress.com /2009/01/27/is-your-girlfriend-or-wife-a-professional-victim/ [15] this article discusses how it works: http://www.nickmilton.com/2010/07/illusionof-confidence-in-km.html#ixzz1RJFhJaj1 [16] The Invisible Gorilla: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307459667 /ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnnytriangl-20&linkCode=as2& camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307459667johnnytriangl-20 [17] The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product /0307459667/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnnytriangl-20&linkCode=as2& camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0307459667johnnytriangl-20 [18] The Power of Persuasion: How Were Bought and Sold: http://www.amazon.com /gp/product/0471763179/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnnytriangl20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369& creativeASIN=0471763179johnnytriangl-20 [19] Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product /1585426245/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnnytriangl-20&linkCode=as2& camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1585426245johnnytriangl-20 [20] You can find it here: http://blog.thenarcissistinyourlife.com/ [21] When Your Perfect Partner Goes Perfectly Wrong: A Survivors Guide to Loving or Leaving the Narcissist in Your Life: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0974350443 /ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=johnnytriangl-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&

6 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM

The Rawness Raw Concepts: The Maturity Paradox, Pt. 2 Print

http://therawness.com/raw-concepts-the-maturity-paradox-pt-2/print/

creative=399369&creativeASIN=0974350443johnnytriangl-20 Copyright 2011 The Rawness. All rights reserved.

7 of 7

18-Jul-12 3:45 PM