Why Do Braggarts Tend To Be Incompetent?

People who score lowest on a skill tend to overestimate their ability the most, a self-assessment bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). It does not mean the unskilled are more confident than experts in absolute terms, and researchers note part of the classic pattern reflects statistical effects such as regression to the mean.

We all have that one friend, colleague, or acquaintance who constantly claims to be an expert at something, while in reality, their skills or performance in the area is nothing but average at best. We often wonder why they wildly overestimate themselves by making such claims. Why is it that we seldom see a true expert in any field making such claims about themselves?

It makes you wonder if there is indeed a correlation between how incompetent a person is and their tendency to resort to bragging. Is there a link between the two, and if yes, why?

Do We Present Ourselves Accurately?

Humans often present themselves in ways that gain approval from others due to social pressure. This aspect, called ‘self-presentation’ has been widely studied in social psychology. Engaging in such behavior is very common, as humans are social beings. We love external validation or acceptance from fellow beings in society.

However, certain individuals attempt a disproportionately positive self-presentation, as compared to their actual skills. Plainly speaking, they resort to boasting, when in reality their skills are rather unremarkable.

A correlational study in the early 1980s attempted to study this effect. Their analysis revealed that people who use more positive self-descriptions, in reality, have fewer markers of attainment. The study stated that the frequent use of status symbols or self-aggrandizement is more common among individuals who are more insecure about their skills. Furthermore, it also stated that someone with actual training or more years of experience in a field was less likely to bring others’ attention to their skills.

The study also identified a link between the tendency to use more positive self-descriptions and a person’s level of education or experience. In other words, more educated individuals were less likely to indulge in bragging. They also showed a lower desire to influence others in their area of expertise. The study theorized that individuals who are incompetent may boast in an attempt to feel more “complete”, due to their insecurity. In contrast, people who are actually competent feel complete due to their extensive education, training, or experience, and hence do not feel the need to brag.

Overestimation Of Self – A Cognitive Bias

Early studies showed initial evidence for a link between insecurity and positive-self description. Later studies analyzed whether an actual “error of judgment” occurs when one tries to accurately measure one’s own ability. Is there a cognitive bias when we judge ourselves?

This was extensively studied by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999, in a paper for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Across four studies, they tested participants on measures of humor, grammar, and logical reasoning, and obtained self-assessments from the same participants on each area. The participants who fell at the bottom in terms of performance tended to overestimate their abilities the most. In one striking result, those whose scores landed them in the 12th percentile on average believed they were in the 62nd percentile. In other words, poor performance went hand in hand with a low awareness of that poor performance. This cognitive bias is now called the Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE).

One caveat is worth keeping in mind: the effect does not mean the unskilled are more confident than experts. Low performers still rate themselves below high performers in absolute terms; they simply overshoot their own true rank by a wider margin. Later researchers have also argued that part of this neat-looking pattern is a statistical artifact. When you sort people by test score and compare each group’s self-estimate, regression to the mean and a general “better-than-average” tendency push the lowest scorers to look like dramatic over-raters even before any metacognitive failure is invoked. The bias appears to be real, but the steepness of the famous chart is partly a quirk of the math.

Interestingly, in these studies, it was also observed that improvement in the individuals’ skills improved their self-awareness as well. In one of the experiments, the worst performers became markedly better at judging their own ability after a short lesson in logical reasoning. This suggests that the bias can be reduced by training oneself to actually perform better on a particular skill, since the very competence you lack is what you need in order to recognize that you lack it.

More recently, a 2020 study set out to look for differences in how the brains of overestimators and underestimators respond during a memory task. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that measures electrical responses from neurons in the brain using electrodes placed on the scalp. Participants studied a list of items, were later tested on whether they recognized them, and then estimated what percentile their performance fell into. Based on how their estimates compared to their actual scores, they were sorted into overestimators and underestimators.

The two groups showed different electrical signatures. Underestimators produced a larger late parietal “old-new” wave, a brain response classically linked to consciously recollecting a memory, while overestimators leaned on an earlier frontal signal associated with a vaguer sense of familiarity. There was also a difference in timing: overestimators were quicker to declare themselves in the top percentile, whereas underestimators were quicker to place themselves at the bottom. The authors are careful not to overclaim, but the results hint that over- and underestimators may draw on subtly different memory processes when they size up their own performance.

A Final Note

Studies on self-presentation and self-awareness tell us that we are extremely bad at judging our own capabilities accurately, or presenting ourselves without being biased. This often leads to people overestimating or positively presenting themselves, which can often be viewed as a form of bragging in society.

Psychologists believe that this partly results from a kind of “mental blind spot” about ourselves: the skills you need to do something well are often the very same skills you need to judge how well you did it. There is also a flip side to the coin. Top performers tend to slightly underestimate themselves, in part because they wrongly assume that tasks they find easy must be easy for everyone. So while bragging, insecurity, and low skill do tend to travel together, the relationship is a tendency on average, not an iron rule that every braggart is a fraud and every quiet person an expert.

Termed as imposter syndrome, many great individuals in the fields of science, art, literature and academia suffer from this condition of constant self-doubt, despite their extreme degree of skill, performance or intelligence. Both of these effects may seem equally ridiculous to an onlooker who is devoid of such a bias in their judgment.

So, next time that annoying friend or colleague brags to you, it might help to remember that they aren’t aware of their shoddy skills! As William Shakespeare rightly said, “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool”. Apparently, science agrees!