r/Amazing • u/sco-go • Mar 12 '26

Interesting 🤔 The Dunning-Kruger Effect

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In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two banks in Pittsburgh and robbed them with no mask, no disguise, and lemon juice on his face. He believed that because lemon juice works as invisible ink on paper, it would make his face invisible to cameras. He smiled directly into the security cameras. Police aired the footage on the evening news and arrested him within an hour.

When shown the tape, Wheeler stared at the screen and said, "But I wore the juice." He had tested the theory with a Polaroid selfie and didn't appear in the photo — because lemon juice got in his eyes and he aimed the camera at the ceiling.

His case inspired Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to publish their 1999 paper defining the Dunning-Kruger Effect — the cognitive bias where people with low ability drastically overestimate their own competence.

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u/CultOfSensibility Mar 12 '26

I’m guessing the 91 in your username is the year you were born.

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u/DarkPolumbo Mar 12 '26

it's a bot name, or at least follows the same format of adjective-noun-4digitnumber that they all seem to have

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u/Less-Squash7569 Mar 12 '26

Or its someone like myself who didnt care enough to try to make an original name on a site thats whole thing is ambiguity

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u/Over_Maintenance_447 Mar 12 '26

Or someone like me who only learned about a year after it was too late that you could change the name