Guinea pigs think they can land a plane

Research from the University of Waikato (New Zealand) shows that people with no flying experience overestimate themselves when it comes to a successful landing.

People can be so confident in their skills, even if they don’t have the skills needed for a task, that they can put themselves and others at risk. Research shows that they think very simply about landing a commercial aircraft safely.

Land a plane

Half of the 780 volunteers who took part in the study first saw a four-minute YouTube video of two commercial pilots landing in a mountainous area. The scientists then asked them how much confidence they had after seeing the video to do it themselves without killing themselves. Thirty percent of these volunteers seemed to have more confidence in this than the volunteers who had not seen this video. “People think, ‘Well, if it really comes down to that, like in an emergency, I could land the plane’. But…it takes skills that most people just don’t have. says Maryanne Garry of the University of Waikato to new scientist†

Results

The researchers found the results “surprising” given that the training of commercial aviation pilots, as well as the training of general aviation, requires a lot of skill. Garry goes on to say that on a scale of 1 to 5, the volunteers gave themselves a rating of 4.4 for the skills they think they have. In short: these people think (after watching a YouTube video) that they can fly an airplane, when pilot training requires hundreds of hours of training and education, sometimes deadly.

According to Garry, people overestimate their self-confidence in certain situations. They think they have certain skills, when they don’t have them at all. She calls it a “quick illusion”. Although this overstatement can endanger people’s lives, there is also a benefit. According to Kayla Jordan, who also works at the University of Waikato, it can give people a boost to cope with the challenges of everyday life. “It’s quite surprising that people feel more confident that they can pull off this highly specialized feat while at the same time telling us that they know landing an airplane takes a lot of expertise,” Jordan said. .