Up and Down the Mount Stupid: An Emotional Explanation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

2025.

Vorchik A., Мамышев М. А.

In this paper, we develop a formal mathematical model aimed to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect that beginners systematically overestimate their own competence in various fields of knowledge and activity. We argue that the Dunning-Kruger effect arises from the emotional nature of confidence combined with unknown unknowns that it simply can not take into account due to limitations caused by associativity of memory. We consider confidence as an emotion whose function is to determine whether a decision that has just been made is ready for implementation or more factors should be taken into account, and the intensity of which is proportional to the share of known knowns from all the facts the person is aware of. However, as the total number of facts is unavailable, people use availability heuristic and substitute it with the smaller number of facts they are aware of, which changes confidence disproportionately to expertness and leads to overconfidence. Based on this logic, we derive the confidence curve and formulate the conditions under which it resembles the shape of the famous Mount Stupid or the so-called beginner's bubble. We explain experts' underconfidence, overconfidence trap, propose how confidence can be managed by teachers and learners, discuss social and rational-emotional aspects of confidence.

Keywords: bounded rationality, associative learning, overconfidence bias, experts' unconfidence, logistic learning curve, emotional decision-making