In the spirit of mitigating the Dunning-Kruger effect, what are effective strategies to increase one's awareness of one's ignorance or incompetence?

Let's ask David Dunning himself if he thinks the Dunning-Kruger effect can be mitigated and if yes, how.

In 2014, David Dunning wrote an article for the Pacific Standard magazine. Titled 'We are all confident idiots' (Page on psmag.com), in it he offers the Socratic method as a tool that could help us disabuse ourselves of our misbeliefs.

• The first step in the right direction is to reveal to ourselves where we stand in our knowledge about a particular topic.
• With its inter-linked series of questions and strict adherence to logic the Socratic method, when used correctly and sincerely, is an ideally constructed agent for unveiling to ourself our own ignorance.

But this is easier said than done because the Socratic method is not for the faint-hearted.

• It requires our willingness to abandon our cushion of complacency and inhabit the zone of discomfort. That's not all.
• A group or at least two person activity may also often be necessary. After all, if we debate with ourselves, we are unlikely to unveil all of our blind spots. Self-preservation instincts will kick in when we try to challenge our most sacrosanct beliefs.
• It requires a willingness to expose weak chinks in our armor to others.
• It means we can't cling to our vanity and hide behind false pride during Socratic debates. If we do, then the debates become pointless. 
• Another way to try to challenge our pre-cognitive fallacies in specific areas would be to take quizzes on those topics. These days there are online quizzes on just about every topic. Many can be taken anonymously. Results of such quizzes would be incontrovertible, objective data on the state of one's knowledge on that topic. How well do such data match our cherished beliefs about our knowledge or skill on that topic? A starting point on the road to hopefully better skills or knowledge on that topic.

I think your question shows a measure of self-awareness. As David Dunning emphasizes, saying, 'I don't know' is often especially hard, and this applies to any of us. If anything, the Dunning-Kruger Effect highlights lack of self-awareness. In that sense, it deals with pre-cognitive dissonance as in we don't deny our incompetence. We simply can't see it in the first place. And this blind spot applies even when we are highly skilled and competent in something because then we tend to assume that others are equally so. This blind spot of the skilled is the often-overlooked side of the Dunning-Kruger coin.

I find your approach reasonable, even laudable. Only quibble I have is with your stated wish for 'faster learning'. It implies mitigating the Dunning-Kruger Effect is somehow a short-cut for speed learning. That does disservice to the spirit and intent of learning. Learning takes however long it takes. My experience has taught me that impatience is an obstacle to learning and to self-awareness.

Oh, and if you missed it, David Dunning did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) a while back. The entire thread is well worth the read. Science AMA Series:I’m David Dunning, a social psychologist whose research focuses on accuracy and illusion in self-judgment (you may have heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect). How good are we at “knowing thyself”? AMA! • /r/science

https://www.quora.com/In-the-spirit-of-mitigating-the-Dunning-Kruger-effect-what-are-effective-strategies-to-increase-ones-awareness-of-ones-ignorance-or-incompetence/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala

Can macho behavior be explained by the handicap principle? The logic would be the following : "I am a healthy young male, therefore I can afford to display aggressive, silly behavior, just in order to demonstrate how inconsequential it is to me. Just to show that I have the genetic firepower to back it up." Note: this question is not an endorsement of macho behavior.

I think not one but two hypotheses, namely the Handicap principle and the Dunning–Kruger effect, could help explain display of aggressive, silly behavior in this particular instance.

How to differentiate a fit male from one pretending to be fit?

• The Handicap Principle doesn't explicitly mention cheaters. As originally proposed by Amotz Zahavi, the closest it comes to cheaters is, 'Characters which attract the other sex cannot always be separated from those which intimidate rivals of the same sex' (1). 
  
  • Characters which attract the other sex refers to potential reward.
  • Characters which intimidate rivals of the same sex refers to potential cost.
  • Degree of overlap between reward-yielding and costly characters is an additional issue.
• A modification of the Handicap Principle proposed by Alan Grafen in 1991 (2) states
  
  • The Darwinian distinction between natural and sexual selection is 'a distinction between selection of ordinary traits on the one hand, and the selection of signaling traits on the other'.
  • 'Ordinary traits are selected for efficiency'
  • OTOH, signaling traits entail waste, i.e. 'self-inflicted costs of the signalers'.
• According to Zahavi- Grafen, a stable sexual signaling system should be honest and costly for the signaler yet the signals/characters themselves have no inherent meaning. How could that be?
  
  • Intent of the signaling, as in intent of macho behavior, is ultimately irrelevant.
  • Regardless whether macho display is authentic or pretense, what matters is what''s perceived by the receiver.
  • There are two signal receivers, one, the other sex, and two, same sex rivals.
• The Handicap Principle does not assert that a signaling system needs to be honest and costly with greater costs for signalers of poorer quality. Rather, it asserts that any stable signaling system needs to have such properties.
  
  • Stability is thus the key property to assess macho behavior within the purview of the Handicap Principle.
  • The Zahavi-Grafen modification implies key cost is over time as in stability of the display, over a lifespan for an individual and across generations for a species.
  • Such a system also allows for occasional deceit.

Moving on from theory, we observe in nature that certain sexual displays, behaviors, vocalizations and other communications remain stable rituals within a species. The peacock is an obvious example.

• We can infer from this that such displays are part of an ESS (Evolutionarily stable strategy).
• In turn, ESS suggests that honest display gets rewarded and that cheating is costly. How so?
• The more frequently a signal is misleading, e.g. macho display without the real strength to back it up, over time the signal receivers (the other sex and same sex rivals) would evolve to ignore such signals, and signals that are most abused would also be the ones to fall into disuse.

What to conclude about costs for human macho behavior cheaters from all this?

• Macho behavior may not entail much energy (cost), at least for some time among (some) young men since it is frequently and abundantly on display the world over.
• Long term, poor quality macho signals would either not yield progeny/fewer progeny, stability of macho display being the contingent factor, both at the individual level over a lifespan, and at the group level for a given culture.
• Incompetent signal receivers could sustain poor quality signalers (even across generations).

I derive that last bit directly from the Dunning–Kruger effect. In David Dunning's own words (4), 'incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack'.

• Per the Handicap Principle, the signal receiver determines whether macho display is authentic or pretense. 
• How good are signal receivers in discriminating between genuinely fit males versus pretenders?
• Scope for pretenders thus depends on signal receiver ability. 
• Enter Dunning-Kruger. It places the burden on the cognitive bias of the signal receiver.
• Thus, cognitive bias of signal receivers regulates possible success of macho cheaters, i.e. those without the 'genetic firepower' to back up their macho display.
• Signal receivers who habitually overrate their ability, in this case to discern genuinely fit males from pretenders, would help sustain macho displays that amount to 'aggressive, silly behavior'.
• Let's also keep in mind that there are two sets of signal receivers, one, women, and two, rival men. Incompetence on the part of both or either could help sustain macho displays that amount to 'aggressive, silly behavior'.

Controlled studies could distinguish the degree of contribution of each set of signal receiver, women versus rival men. Maybe also reveal interesting cultural and/or ethnic and/or geographic differences in the contribution of each set towards the success of macho displays that amount to 'aggressive, silly behavior'?

Bibliography

1. Zahavi, Amotz. "Mate selection—a selection for a handicap." Journal of theoretical Biology 53.1 (1975): 205-214. Page on arizona.edu
2. Grafen, Alan. "1: Modelling in behavioural ecology." Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach 3 (1991): 5-31. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/cv...
3. Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning. "Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments." Journal of personality and social psychology 77.6 (1999): 1121. Page on nottingham.ac.uk
4. Dunning, D. (2014, November-December). We are all confident idiots. Pacific Standard, 7,46-54 Page on psmag.com

https://www.quora.com/Can-macho-behavior-be-explained-by-the-handicap-principle/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala