Dunning-Kruger effect

Dunning-Kruger effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which people who are worst at a task show the most illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average.

Hypotheses

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" in December 1999. [cite journal |url=http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf |title=Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments |author=Justin Kruger |coauthors=David Dunning |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |volume=77 |issue=6 |pages=1121–34 |year=1999 |pmid=10626367 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). [Citation | url = http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin#The_Descent_of_Man_.281871.29 | title = The Descent of Man | author = Charles Darwin | year = 1871 | pages = Introduction, page 4 | format = w | accessdate = 2008-07-18] They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,
# Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
# Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
# Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
# If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

tudies

They set out to test these hypotheses on human subjects consisting of Cornell undergraduates who were registered in various psychology courses. In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank, whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank. As Dunning and Kruger noted,

Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.

Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence. A follow-up study suggests that grossly incompetent students improve both their skill level and their ability to estimate their class rank only after extensive tutoring in the skills they had previously lacked.

In 2003 Dunning and Joyce Ehrlinger, also of Cornell University, published a study that detailed a shift in people's views of themselves influenced by external cues. Participants in the study (Cornell University undergraduates) were given tests of their knowledge of geography, some intended to positively affect their self-views, some intended to affect them negatively. They were then asked to rate their performance, and those given the positive tests reported significantly better performance than those given the negative. [cite journal |author=Joyce Ehrlinger |coauthors=David Dunning |year=2003 |month=January |title=How Chronic Self-Views Influence (and Potentially Mislead) Estimates of Performance |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |volume=84 |issue=1 |pages=5–17 |publisher=American Psychological Association |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.84.1.5 ]

Daniel Ames and Lara Kammrath extended this work to sensitivity to others, and the subjects' perception of how sensitive they were. [cite journal |title=Mind-Reading and Metacognition: Narcissism, not Actual Competence, Predicts Self-Estimated Ability |journal=Journal of Nonverbal Behavior |publisher=Springer Netherlands |author=Daniel R. Ames |coauthors=Lara K. Kammrath |volume=28 |issue=3 |month=September |year=2004 |doi=10.1023/B:JONB.0000039649.20015.0e |pages=187–209] Some more work by Burson Larrick and Joshua Klayman [cite journal |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |year=2006 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=60–77 |url=http://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/~larrick/bio/Files/2006%20Burson%20Larrick%20Klayman%20JPSP.pdf |title=Skilled or Unskilled, but Still Unaware of It: How Perceptions of Difficulty Drive Miscalibration in Relative Comparisons |author=Katherine A. Burson |coauthors=Richard P. Larrick; Joshua Klayman;YUTAO |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.90.1.60 ] has suggested that the effect is not so obvious and may be due to noise and bias levels.

ee also

* Depressive realism
* Downing effect
* Lake Wobegon effect
* Self-efficacy
* Self-serving bias

References


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