Do I have more trouble with this than other forumites?

David Dunning and Justin Kruger (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12688660_Unskilled_and_Unaware_of_It_How_Difficulties_in_Recognizing_One’s_Own_Incompetence_Lead_to_Inflated_Self-Assessments

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error.

I just realised that the above much-quoted graph is a fake. It is not what Dunning and Kruger found at all.

What Dunning and Kruger found is that across all levels of competence, people judged themselves almost equally competent, with a slight rise in judged competence with actual competence. Here for example is case 3.

But then perhaps, just perhaps, the incompetent person is the one who set up the test in the first place? Nah.

mollwollfumble said:

Do I have more trouble with this than other forumites?

David Dunning and Justin Kruger (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 77.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12688660_Unskilled_and_Unaware_of_It_How_Difficulties_in_Recognizing_One’s_Own_Incompetence_Lead_to_Inflated_Self-Assessments

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error.

I just realised that the above much-quoted graph is a fake. It is not what Dunning and Kruger found at all.

What Dunning and Kruger found is that across all levels of competence, people judged themselves almost equally competent, with a slight rise in judged competence with actual competence. Here for example is case 3.

But then perhaps, just perhaps, the incompetent person is the one who set up the test in the first place? Nah.

Probably, yeah.

And in organizational hierarchies every person will rise in the hierarchy to the level of their own incompetence.

Ian said:

And in organizational hierarchies every person will rise in the hierarchy to the level of their own incompetence.

uh we thought that was peter

of course we know everything

mollwollfumble said:

I just realised that the above much-quoted graph is a fake. It is not what Dunning and Kruger found at all.

well sure, we wouldn’t exactly call it much-quoted, as this is the first time we’ve encountered it being quoted

here’s the World COVID-19 Leaderboard though

SCIENCE said:

Ian said:

And in organizational hierarchies every person will rise in the hierarchy to the level of their own incompetence.

uh we thought that was peter

of course we know everything

call im peter call im paul..

Everything? Who inspired Richard Penniman to wear turbans and capes?

In Figure 3, what was perceived test score? Was it the score they expected to get, or the score they thought they had got?

How often have the same results been replicated, and in what contexts?

Did you read the Wikipedia article, mathematical critique section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

It seems to support your conclusions (although I got so frustrated by their repeated reference to diagrams they didn’t display I only skimmed the second half).

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Did you read the Wikipedia article, mathematical critique section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

It seems to support your conclusions (although I got so frustrated by their repeated reference to diagrams they didn’t display I only skimmed the second half).

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

Religion?

Tamb said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Did you read the Wikipedia article, mathematical critique section:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

It seems to support your conclusions (although I got so frustrated by their repeated reference to diagrams they didn’t display I only skimmed the second half).

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

Religion?

:)

That’s certainly a widespread example of the effect.

The Rev Dodgson said:

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

a misunderstanding of the difference of an explanation to a layman and how scientists speak among themselves. or something like that.

ChrispenEvan said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

a misunderstanding of the difference of an explanation to a layman and how scientists speak among themselves. or something like that.

I’m talking about when this happens amongst scientists (or other people who should know better).

I guess everyone has to adapt cultural tools to their individual wetware, so’s going to be nine-tenths bullshit

The Rev Dodgson said:

What’s the name for the effect when a scientific hypothesis with gaping holes is treated as unquestionable truth?

I call it … damn, I had a good name for it just two months ago.

If I boil down what the results of Dunning Kruger really say, that say that without expert assistance, nobody can tell their relative competence, no matter that their actual competence.

But a key word is “relative”. A person may be completely aware of their own level of competence without knowing the competence of Joe Blow, a stranger picked at random off the street. In that case, the best a person can do is guess that the competence of the average Joe is slightly below their own. In the Dunning Kruger experiment, each person tended to guess that average Joe’s competence was 80% of their own.

In other words, not only does Dunning Kruger says that those with little competence rank their relative competence at (slightly) less than those with more competence. It also fails to give enough information to decide whether an incompetent person ranks themselves too highly or ranks the competence of average Joe too low. I suspect the latter.

poke a psychology question in here, or philosophy maybe call it

what do you get when the force of culture tends to produce mental state blindness. I mean a specific type of mental state blindness, or a particular dimension of it, being an equilibrium state blindness

the question’s been kicking around in my head for a while