“But I Wore the Juice!”

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger published a paper in 1999, “Unskilled and Unaware of It...”, which introduced a strange yet troubling phenomenon now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Before getting to the theory itself, it's worth recounting the incident that inspired the study, because the event is almost a perfect real-life illustration of the concept.

The story dates back to 1995. A man from Pittsburgh, America, named MacArthur Wheeler robbed two banks in a single day without wearing any disguise. Not only that, he looked directly into the CCTV cameras and even smiled for them. When the police arrested him, he responded with genuine surprise:

“But I wore the juice!”

The obvious question is: what juice?

The answer is lemon juice.

Wheeler believed that because lemon juice can be used to make invisible ink, covering his face with lemon juice would also make him invisible to security cameras. The most amusing part is that, before carrying out the robberies, he tested his theory by taking a Polaroid photograph of himself. The camera failed to focus properly, producing a blurry image, and Wheeler interpreted this as proof that he had become invisible. This incident perfectly captures the Dunning-Kruger Effect: incompetent individuals often lack the ability to recognise their own mistakes and therefore greatly overestimate their competence. They carry a double burden, incompetence itself and ignorance of that incompetence.

My main observation concerns how this phenomenon appears among students, researchers, and academics in English literature. I should acknowledge from the outset that this observation is partly anecdotal and may contain an element of confirmation bias. Even so, the pattern is difficult to ignore. Across many institutions, English literary studies frequently present themselves as a kind of master discourse capable of explaining everything from human existence and politics to religion and culture. When students first encounter theorists such as Derrida or Foucault, they often develop a beginner’s bubble of confidence. After acquiring only a limited amount of theoretical knowledge, their confidence can quickly exceed their actual understanding, leading to what might be called exuberant, error-filled theorising.

Two factors seem especially important in producing this illusion of omniscience.

1. Verbocentrism and epistemic hubris

English literary studies often place enormous value on the ability to use complex language and abstract metaphors. Linguistic sophistication becomes closely associated with intellectual authority. This can generate a form of epistemic hubris: students begin to assume that because the world can be interpreted as a text, training in textual analysis qualifies them to pronounce on politics, philosophy, religion, or virtually any other subject. Specialist empirical knowledge appears unnecessary from this perspective. The attitude resembles what Donna Haraway criticised as the “God trick”, the illusion of seeing everything from nowhere.

2. Psychology in action

Literature is frequently presented as psychology in action. Reading fiction is treated as a route into the deepest workings of the human mind. This framework can encourage students to believe that analysing fictional characters grants them authority over human psychology, emotion, and behaviour more generally. They may come to feel that literary insight reveals truths about the world that are deeper than those available through scientific investigation. As a result, they often feel entitled to offer expert commentary on subjects ranging from theology to the meaning of life.

Part of this confidence stems from the spiral structure of literary education, which tends to reward breadth more than depth. Students become familiar with the terminology of many disciplines, yet they sometimes mistake linguistic fluency for substantive knowledge. There is also, in some quarters, a degree of disdain towards mathematics and quantitative reasoning. While this is occasionally framed as a philosophical position, it can also serve to mask a lack of competence in those areas. In literary interpretation, errors are often excused as merely “another interpretation,” which prevents confidence from being calibrated against reality.

At a broader level, an institutional feedback loop reinforces this tendency. Theoretical language provides a kind of armour, while, in Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, cultural capital grants social prestige that can conceal intellectual limitations. The result is oddly similar to MacArthur Wheeler’s lemon juice. We imagine we have coated ourselves in the juice of knowledge and therefore assume no one can see our incompetence. Yet the incompetence remains visible to everyone except ourselves.

Note: Translated from Bengali.