Trump’s ‘Dangerous Disability’? It’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Last week, behavioral researchers at Brown University held a colloquium titled “Analytic thinking, bullshit receptivity, and fake news sensitivity.” At an informal gathering afterwards, the conversation turned to the not-completely-unrelated topic of Donald Trump.

Earlier that week, syndicated columnist George Will offered an amateur diagnosis of sorts. Will’s assessment, based on Trump’s off-base statements about the Civil War and other topics, was that the president suffers from a “dangerous disability” -- not only because he’s ignorant, and ignorant of his ignorance, but because he “does not know what it is to know something.”