Full Circle

At the beginning for the journalism course for which this blog began, our professor had us read a blog post by Steve Schwartz called (for those of us who prefer not to swear) "The Three Types of Knowledge."

In this post, Schwartz asserts that, as humans, we really know far less than we think we do. He categorizes information into three categories, "what we know," "what we know we don't know" and "what we don't know we don't know." He then uses bar graphs and blunt language to explain that the actual goal of education is only to teach us how large the final category truly is.

I had seen the concept before, presented in a much more professional way, and was not too impressed this time around. However, I could not have imagined how often the idea would show up in my own research for the story.

Though concepts of cognitive bias such as the Dunning-Kruger effect didn't directly relate with my story, the brushes with them that I had in my research expanded my own awareness of how much I "don't know I don't know." They also confirmed the gist of Schwartz's message: that we seem to think we know much more than we actually do.

I first discovered this doing research about the demographics of Muslims when I came across this article from The Guardian. It reveals the results of a survey that assessed how much people know about their countries. The results showed a great gap in knowledge! Using the averages of the answers of those surveyed, respondents thought 21 percent of people in the United Kingdom are Muslim, while actually only 5 percent are. American respondents thought 15 percent of the U.S. population is Muslim, while only 1 percent actually is. Results are equally off-base for the questions.

All this made me wonder: Can Americans truly be prejudiced toward a population they don't even understand? If we misunderstand how many Muslims are in the country, might we also misunderstand what they believe and how they act?

The answer is yes. I learned from social psychologist Walter Stephan that feelings of prejudice often stem from feelings of threat based on the negative stereotypes people hold about members of a particular group. They don't have to be accurate stereotypes to do damage. And, as psychologist David Dunning explains in his article, "We Are All Confident Idiots," the human tendency to assume we know everything when we don't is pervasive.

So, what does all this mean for individuals working to find their place in today's world?

To me, it means we must be humble. We must seek new knowledge at every opportunity, aware that we will never know it all. We must seek correction whenever available, aware that we are probably wrong about many things. We must be patient and forgiving of others who make mistakes, aware that we make the same mistakes in our own way.

That all sound mushy, but it's true. I may not know everything, but what I do know is that I've got a lot more to learn.