Why Stupid People Are the Most Confident | Professor Jiang

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Those people who are stupid, lack the capacity to know they're stupid. There are 500 students in a psychology class, first year university. They made every student take an IQ test. After they took the IQ test, they asked each student, "How do you think you did on the IQ test? Do you place in the top 5% or the bottom 5%?" And it turns out that no one got the ranking correct. So, those who are in the top 5% in terms of IQ thought they were maybe in the top 20% because for them it was easy. They assumed that for everyone else it was easy as well.

[00:00:31]But what was dramatic is those who scored the lowest thought they were average. And the reason why is those people who are stupid lack the capacity to know they're stupid. Those who are stupid are often the most confident in [music] the world. This helps to explain why the world is often the people in power are stupid. They don't know they're stupid, they were confident, and they do stupid things.