"Why is it that the intelligent are so uncertain and the ignorant so cocksure?"

BlueSkyJaunte

Well-Known Member
Well, I read this quote in another thread and it reminded me of a study done at my alma mater (sadly long after I departed). I thought you all might enjoy a little side-trip down Psychology Lane to read about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. 2thumbs

wikipedia said:
Kruger and Dunning 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, they 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. Roughly, participants who found tasks to be relatively easy erroneously assumed, to some extent, that the tasks must also be easy for others.

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.
 
so the harder you think knife making is, the better you are at it?
 
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