民主制度主要依據的假設是公民（或至少大多數的公民）在看見參選者或政策時有能力選擇出最適政治人物代表或最佳政策。但一個研究揭露了一個不幸的觀點，人類的心智能力是與最佳化的概念違背的，而人類無法選出最適解的這件事指出，民主選舉只能產生平庸的領導與政策。
這是由康乃爾大學心理學家 David Dunning 所做的研究。其研究指出：能力不足的人們沒有辦法評斷其他有能力的人，或者其他有能力之人的想法的品質。
舉例來說，稅。
如果人們缺乏稅務重整專業知識，他們將沒有能力選出真正的專家。簡單說，他們沒有足夠的智識來做有意義的判斷。
所以，無論參選人能舉出多少資訊或事實，還是無法無視大部分選民缺乏能力這件事，也就是選民無法做出正確的評估。「非常高明的想法通常很難讓人們採納，因為大部分的人不夠精明，所以也無法認出那個點子有多好。」Dunning 說。
他和他的同事 Justin Kruger 已經一遍又一遍的證實人們在自我能力的評估上有自我妄想。無論研究員測試人們評估笑話好笑的程度、校正文法，還是在棋賽上的表現，這兩個研究員發現人們總是評估自己的能力在「平均之上」，就算他們的實際表現是非常的差。
所以，我們對於他人能力的判斷力就和我們對我們自己能力的判斷力都半斤八兩，不怎麼高明。「在某種程度上，在缺乏足夠的能力下還要去評判其他人是否有能力，你會是最糟糕的裁判。」Dunning 說。
在一個實驗裡，研究員要求學生去批改文法考試的考卷，而他們發現在文考考試本身考越糟糕的學生，批改其他學生考卷的結果也越不正確。根本上的原因是，就算他們看到正確的答案，他們也無法認出它。解釋很簡單。「如果你在某個領域的知識有個缺口，那你就不具備評估自己或他人的能力。」Dunning說。
但這些實驗裡還有一個很怪的現象－－在誰表現最差上，人們總是能正確指認出來，但卻無法辨認出誰是最好的。
德國的社會學家 Mato Nagel 用 Dunning & Kruger 的理論來為一次選舉做電腦模擬。在他的選舉數學模型裡，他假設：選民本身的領導能力是呈現鐘形分佈－－也就是有非常好的，也有非常糟的領導者 ，不過大部分的領導者都是平庸的；假設二：選民無法認出在領導能力上比自己更優秀的候選人。
這個選舉模擬結果是：比平均能力稍微好一點候選人總是能獲勝。
Nagel 導出結論：民主鮮少，或從來就沒有選出過最好的領導者。民主政治比獨裁或其他政治體制好的優點僅有「有效地避免低於平均值的候選人成為領導者。」
原文
The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.
The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.
As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries.
He and colleague Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now of New York University, have demonstrated again and again that people are self-delusional when it comes to their own intellectual skills. Whether the researchers are testing people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess, the duo has found that people always assess their own performance as "above average" — even people who, when tested, actually perform at the very bottom of the pile.
We're just as undiscerning about the skills of others as about ourselves. "To the extent that you are incompetent, you are a worse judge of incompetence in other people," Dunning said. In one study, the researchers asked students to grade quizzes that tested for grammar skill. "We found that students who had done worse on the test itself gave more inaccurate grades to other students." Essentially, they didn't recognize the correct answer even when they saw it.
The reason for this disconnect is simple: "If you have gaps in your knowledge in a given area, then you’re not in a position to assess your own gaps or the gaps of others," Dunning said. Strangely though, in these experiments, people tend to readily and accurately agree on who the worst performers are, while failing to recognize the best performers.
The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness stemming from our own personal lack of expertise.
Mato Nagel, a sociologist in Germany, recently implemented Dunning and Kruger's theories by computer-simulating a democratic election. In his mathematical model of the election, he assumed that voters' own leadership skills were distributed on a bell curve — some were really good leaders, some, really bad, but most were mediocre — and that each voter was incapable of recognizing the leadership skills of a political candidate as being better than his or her own. When such an election was simulated, candidates whose leadership skills were only slightly better than average always won.
Nagel concluded that democracies rarely or never elect the best leaders. Their advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders."
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