Unskilled and Unaware of it!

[James Patrick]

TULISAN Tactical Training is addressing a topic once a month on the "Links and News" page on our website below.

Our February topic is an APA journal title "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing Ones Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments."

Go through our site to read the article.

It is interesting how this might apply to the Martial Arts world. This is especially interesting when looking at new students who are looking for martial arts instruction. They are not competent themselves in fighting arts because they are beginners, so they have little ability to recognize competence in martial arts instructors or schools that they are seeking out. This is how many schools who are incompetent who know how to market themselves can manage to attract students.

Interesting article, and an interesting topic of discussion, I think.

James

 

[RHD]

It is interesting how this might apply to the Martial Arts world. This is especially interesting when looking at new students who are looking for martial arts instruction. They are not competent themselves in fighting arts because they are beginners, so they have little ability to recognize competence in martial arts instructors or schools that they are seeking out. This is how many schools who are incompetent who know how to market themselves can manage to attract students.

Interesting article, and an interesting topic of discussion, I think.

James

You know...people can be very smart in thier chosen field for a career. They can get PHD's and accomplish milestones in academia. They can manage others, walk and chew gum at the same time, and then...Walk into a martial arts school and completely buy into all kinds of silliness about fighting, self defense, and martial arts.

Mike

 

[Zepp]

http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

Interesting paper. It's not exactly news that people delude themselves about their skill in particular areas, but it's interesting to see researchers actually try to quantify how delusional people are. I have some doubts about how precise their first study was though.

I think most people could probably just read the introduction and the "general discussion" near the end and get the gist of it.

 

[Adept]

Whats new? Peoples mouths have been writing cheques their bodies can't cash for a long time.

 

[Zepp]

What's new is that they've tried to create tests that measure just how deluded a person is about their abilities in certain area.

I'm guessing Jame's intent in posting this was to get all of us thinking about how accurately we evaluate our own skills in martial arts.

 

[Adept]

What's new is that they've tried to create tests that measure just how deluded a person is about their abilities in certain area.

I'm guessing Jame's intent in posting this was to get all of us thinking about how accurately we evaluate our own skills in martial arts.

Hmm. The link you posted earlier didn't work for me. Is there a link to the article?

 

[Cruentus]

I put the article on my site not just so that people could evaluate their own training, but so people could think about how the concept fits with beginners in the martial arts.

What happens is a person decides they want to learn self-defense, so they look in the phone book, grab a flyer, or see an ad, and they try to start the process of evaluating which Martial Arts or Self-Defense school to attend.

But, the thing is, most often they are not competent at recognizing what is real and applicable for self-defense, and what isn't. They are beginners in the martial arts, so they are not going to recognize good martial arts when they see it. So, most often, they are going off of advertising and marketing, outward appearances, or perhaps how well they hit it off with the instructor. Everything seems "right" even though they really don't have a concept of what is right and what isn't yet, so they join the school. Perhaps they're convinced to pay a large sum of money for startup fee's, uniform fee's, first and last months dues, with contracts, etc. Well, what they have now done is they have made an investment in future goals of learning how to be competent at self-defense with this school. This is where cognitive disonnence begins to set in. They have invested their time and money into starting their training, and because of this they are already hooked. Do you think that most people will stop training if they find out that their school is not legit or teaching viable self-defense? No. No one wants to be "wrong," and no one likes to be a "sucker," so they will stand by their decision to train when there is varifiable reasons that they have made the wrong investment.

So, they train and train, and now they are a "black-belt." The school and instructors weren't competent to begin with, so do you think that they are going to be competent martial artists themselves? No. But, they have a "black-belt" now. They are going to have an inflated sense of their own capabilities. Yet, even if their incompetence is proven time and time again, they will continue with their inflated senses, and cognitive dissonence. They will become teachers themselves. And thus...the cycle will continue.

I think it is a good article because it discusses a topic that is a major piece of the reason why so many martial arts schools are completely inadequete when it comes to teaching real world self-defense, yet so many people continue to keep these schools in business.

I just thought it made for an interesting read. Also makes for an interesting discussion...thanks for posting James.

Also -
Adept,

Click on my site in my signature, or in James signature, go to my Links and News Page, and the link to the article is there for you to read.

Paul

 

[Cruentus]

Damn...

I just tried my link from my page and it doesn't work. It was just there yesterday, but they moved it or threw it! I am having trouble finding it again.

Well, I guess I'll need a new topic on my page for february if I can't find it. If one of you find it, please post it here. That's too bad too, it was a good article.

Sorry guys...

Paul

 

[still learning]

Hello, Will the real test be in the moment of a actual engagement? How do we measure our own selfs? our own learning skills? Am I own the right subject? Oh well.....Aloha

 

[Cruentus]

Hello, Will the real test be in the moment of a actual engagement? How do we measure our own selfs? our own learning skills? Am I own the right subject? Oh well.....Aloha

I think your on the right subject.

For ourselves, I think that we want to try to test what we know as much as we can on the training floor. The training floor will never be the same as the real thing no matter how realistic we train, but we can train as to set up situations where our skills are truly tested. The only way to test our skills is to go live with a resisting and unpredictable opponent, see the results, and decide if what we are doing will work or not. This live training can range from partner live drills to semi-sparring or sparring to scenario training. Coupled with our live training, looking at things like statistical information and real world evidence also will help you understand if what you are doing fits with what may happened in reality.

Now, for beginners, it's different. They don't have enough training yet to test what they know, because they don't know anything yet. So, how can they be sure that they are looking at the right school? I think that the first thing they need to do is look for ethical behavior by the instructors and the school. This means do a background check, and check on lineage. The checking on lineage is not for the sake to go on a fraud-busting hunt, but this just acts as a litmus test. Generally, if a school is not ethical and truthful about their background, then chances are they are not going to have trouble inflating and misleading when it comes to self-defense. The next thing would be to look at a class. A beginner will not be able to tell if they are "good" or not yet. But they can watch and decide if the class structure fits their personal style. They should also be looking for live training as a part of normal class. And last, they should be looking to see how other aspects of self-defense besides the physical movements are addressed. Each school has different ways of addressing these, but the bottom line is that they must be accessable somewhere.

So, that is what I think that beginners should do when looking for a school to train, and what we should do to ensure that what we are doing will work.

Paul

 

[loki09789]

Hello, Will the real test be in the moment of a actual engagement? How do we measure our own selfs? our own learning skills? Am I own the right subject? Oh well.....Aloha

Exactly my concern with any of this stuff.

What is being used as 'standard' or baseline for comparison. If you are going to arbitrate to someone that they have it or not, how did you establish that baseline?

I think it is a neat idea, but it is similar to saying that in order to be 'fit to fight' in the service you have to be able to do so many pushups/pull ups, sit ups, run in a certain time....how did those become the standards? Why are they valid?

 

[Adept]

Whats new? Peoples mouths have been writing cheques their bodies can't cash for a long time.

In response to this post I received this message, and a negative rep point to go with it:

"Peoples mouths have been writing cheques their bodies can't cash for a long time.".....just like you

To the anonymous (surprise surprise) person who left it: If you have some kind of issue with me, contact me by PM so we can attempt to resolve it like mature, rational people. Sniping from behind your shield of anonymity like this is both childish and cowardly.

 

[AC_Pilot]

I just want to say this is a great topic and some good comments have been made by several posters. Those who are legends in their own minds exist in very trade, profession, sport or activity and naturally this truth extends to MAs and self defense. These egotistically driven people won't discover how incompetent they are until the balloon goes up.

Adept.. I suspect we have a few nasty little trolls lurking here..they are on every forum. Maybe exactly the kind of person this thread is discussing.. it's easy to insult someone anonymously, hiding behind a computer, when they would never say it to your face, eh? I just ignore them.

 

[Cruentus]

The link to the article was disabled, so I had to change topics for my February Zine. Too bad, that was a good article.

Oh well, this still makes for a good discussion here though...

yours,

Paul

 

[loki09789]

The link to the article was disabled, so I had to change topics for my February Zine. Too bad, that was a good article.

Oh well, this still makes for a good discussion here though...

yours,

Paul

The link might be down but could you cut and paste it into the website (with proper citation of course) and then create a link to that location?

I think it is more than good conversation when people are saying the idea is good, but how are standards of 'dillusional' and 'credible' skill being measured and the 'validity' of those findings based on the original text.

 

[Flatlander]

Its really unfortunate that the article is AWOL, I would like to have read it. Without that reference, it's difficult to really contribute to the meat of this thread, but, I will say that it certainly sounds reasonable that there are people out there who are deluding themselves about their combative effectiveness, as well as new potential students who are simply unaware of how to assess the quality of skill of a potential teacher when searching for a place to train.

I don't think that whether or not there are folks out there, looking for business, with dubious histories and unsatisfactory training programs is really in doubt. This is happenning everywhere. The question I see is, how many of these fraudsters are doing this intentionally, to scam up some cash, and how many are actually deluding themselves, believing that the skillset they have is sufficient for the preparation of students?

 

[Ray]

Peoples mouths have been writing cheques their bodies can't cash for a long time.

I like the way you put that.

 

[Cruentus]

The link might be down but could you cut and paste it into the website (with proper citation of course) and then create a link to that location?

I think it is more than good conversation when people are saying the idea is good, but how are standards of 'dillusional' and 'credible' skill being measured and the 'validity' of those findings based on the original text.

Sorry dude, I can't. All I had on my site was the link to the article, which is now disabled. I wish I cut and pasted the article, or printed it out for myself, now that it has disappeared.

You ask a valid question though. I am not really sure how they measured skill in the study. I had the link and I had read it a few months ago, and I didn't get the chance to read it again before it got disabled.

Ah well...