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Credentials feel like competence everywhere
Credentials as proof
Psychologists call this epistemic trespassing. It was everywhere during the pandemic, when people started opining about vaccines and epidemiology on the strength of a line like, I have a Harvard degree, so that's good enough.
Nobel disease
Nobel disease, where Nobel Prize winners espouse on topics they don't know much about, is a different syndrome from Dunning-Kruger, and it goes by the same name, epistemic trespassing. It goes to a fever pitch when the trespasser has a Nobel.
Circle of competence
A lot of people's beliefs about their own competence come from soft cues like these, not from any test of what they know. It is a failure to know your circle of competence: the geography of being an expert includes knowing where its boundaries are.
Why does expertise tempt people to trespass?
The term epistemic trespassing comes from philosopher Nathan Ballantyne, who defined it in a 2019 paper in the journal Ethics. He described trespassers as experts in one field who make judgments in another without the competence to do so. Ballantyne argued that being an expert in one area can make a person overestimate their ability to judge another.
Why does competence in one area seem to spread?
Psychologist Edward Thorndike documented a pattern in 1920 after studying how military officers rated their soldiers. Ratings of separate traits, such as physique, intelligence, and leadership, correlated much more closely than they should have. He called it a constant error in ratings, and it came to be known as the halo effect. A positive impression in one area colors judgments in others.
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