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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by MarSch (talk | contribs) at 17:16, 22 March 2007 (paper critique). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

To some, the Kruger Dunning effect is more a matter of believe. Looking at the original paper it appears that the estimated quality of ones own performance is almost independent of the actual test performance: all test subjects rated themselves with 55 to 70%. Hence, test performance and the own perception of test performance may not be related at all, since both smart and clueless people responded with the same standard guess.

Or, to put it into a better phrase: All people think that they are smart.  :-)

That's not what the paper actually demonstrated. Much more interesting are the changes in self-evaluation after seeing the work of others and after receiving training. Incompetent people do not change their inflated estimates of themselves even when presented with the work of others, but they do change after receiving training — thus becoming more competent, and more capable of evaluating their previous poor performance. Conversely, highly competent people fall prey to the false consensus effect and underestimate themselves because they assume everyone is as good as they are, barring evidence to the contrary. Training increases both the estimate of their own competence (since they receive confirmation that they were correct) and of their competence with respect to others.

It is true that all (or most) people think they are above average, which is probably just a mechanism for keeping a positive (and hence productive) self-image. What the paper demonstrated was that a large factor in why incompetent people do not recognize their own incompetence is because they cannot competently evaluate their performance. They suck even at knowing that they suck.

If you're bad at something you're also likely to be bad at recognizing that you're bad at it. Obviously this applies much less to tasks where success or failure can be trivially correlated with the results and/or do not require knowledge to establish (your ability in cooking a nice souffle is easily measured by tasting the end result) but many tasks are complicated and/or knowledge-based, and the outcome is not immediately obvious to relate to one's own ability. JRM · Talk 10:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

That jibes with my memory of it. However, there is little value to discussing this on the talk page. Why not improve the article itself? Uucp 10:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Another study showed that 80% of all questions related to Misplaced Pages editing can be answered with "because I'm lazy". :-) Actually, I only wrote the above because I'd just read the paper and the remark I replied to seemed inappropriate. You're quite right that the article could use some attention too, however. I don't know whether the "Dunning-Kruger effect" doesn't happen to be exactly what the anon describes, though; I'm not a psychology student. I'll see if I can expand on the description of the paper in the next few days. (I'm off to catch a train, so I have a good excuse this time. :-) JRM · Talk 11:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I found this to be interesting (from ) <>< tbc 19:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

In a final experiment, Dunning and Kruger set out to discover if training would help modify the exaggerated self-perceptions of incapable subjects. In fact, a short training session in logical reasoning did improve the ability of low-scoring subjects to assess their performance realistically, they found.

The findings, the psychologists said, support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that "he who knows best knows how little he knows."

paper critique

All that the paper finds is that in domains where competence and metacognitive ability (to use their terms) are the same -- as they are in black and white knowledge-based domains such as knowing whether "I walk" or "Walk I" is grammatical English -- that competence and metacognitive ability are the same. What a surprise. Fortunately they do mention something like this at the end:

When can the incompetent be expected to overestimate themselves because of their lack of skill? Although our data do not speak to this issue directly, we believe the answer depends on the domain under consideration. Some domains, like those examined in this article, are those in which knowledge about the domain confers competence in the domain. Individuals with a great understanding of the rules of grammar or inferential logic, for example, are by definition skilled linguists and logicians. In such domains, lack of skill implies both the inability to perform competently as well as the inability to recognize competence, and thus are also the domains in which the incompetent are likely to be unaware of their lack of skill.
In other domains, however, competence is not wholly dependent on knowledge or wisdom, but depends on other factors, such as physical skill. One need not look far to find individuals with an impressive understanding of the strategies and techniques of bas- ketball, for instance, yet who could not "dunk" to save their lives. (These people are called coaches.) Similarly, art appraisers make a living evaluating fine calligraphy, but know they do not possess the steady hand and patient nature necessary to produce the work themselves. In such domains, those in which knowledge about the domain does not necessarily translate into competence in the domain, one can become acutely—even painfully—aware of the limits of one's ability. In golf, for instance, one can know all about the fine points of course management, club selection, and effective "swing thoughts," but one's incompetence will become sorely obvious when, after watching one's more able partner drive the ball 250 yards down the fairway, one proceeds to hit one's own ball 150 yards down the fairway, 50 yards to the right, and onto the hood of that 1993 Ford Taurus.

All that they really show is that the incompetents overestimate the number of questions that they themselves got right. And that people assign themselves a percentile score of a bit above average when presented with a group of people of unknown ability.
Furthermore I have to point out that they got their answer to the example with the cards wrong. For their answer to be correct you need to make the additional assumption that each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. The correct answer without that extra assumption is A and 4 (as they say) but also B which might have E on its other side.
So what is this Dunning-Kruger effect??? --MarSch 17:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)