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- People with low levels of competence in an area tend to over-estimate their abilities in that area. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that their lack of competence actually hampers them from making an accurate assessment of their level of ability.<\/li>\n
- Conversely, people with high levels of competence in an area tend to underestimate their abilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
You were probably already aware of\u00a0one aspect of the Dunning-Kruger effect, even if you didn\u2019t know it by name.\u00a0 Adages such as \u201cA little knowledge is a dangerous thing<\/i>\u201d or \u201cEmpty vessels make most noise<\/i>\u201d allude to the first part of their conclusion. What I find interesting is the second part; that people with high competence tend to underestimate their ability. Whilst people with\u00a0low competence in a particular area don\u2019t know enough to know that there is lots that they don\u2019t know and therefore over-estimate their abilities, people with high competence\u00a0<\/b>know enough to know there is lots they don\u2019t know and therefore consider that they know less than they actually do. Follow me?<\/p>\n
A friend recounted to me earlier this week how she went into some of her exams in her undergraduate degree exuding calm and confidence, not because she was well prepared but rather\u00a0because she actually hadn\u2019t studied enough to realise how much she didn\u2019t know about the topic. Meanwhile she observed that some of her very diligent classmates who had done much more study were much more stressed than she\u00a0was. On reflection she recognises\u00a0that\u00a0it\u00a0was\u00a0probably\u00a0partly due to the fact that they were aware\u00a0that there was lots that they still didn\u2019t know while she was comfortable in blissful ignorance!<\/p>\n
Is there anything that can help people become more accurate in their self-assessment?\u00a0Dunning and Kruger found that if people of low competence (who have an overly optimistic view of their abilities) are provided with appropriate education and feedback\u00a0they become more realistic about their abilities. Once they understand a bit more about a topic, people are better placed to realise how little they know. And for the highly competent people? Once they gain some insight into\u00a0how little the “incompetent” people know (for example by seeing themselves bench-marked against\u00a0their less competent counterparts), they become more realistic about their own abilities. Feedback in both situations is the key to resolving the mistaken beliefs.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0mentioned earlier that this concept has helped me to keep my cool. How so? Well, I have frequent experiences of people who have little knowledge of a topic telling me how I should do things, be it in\u00a0my work or\u00a0parenting\u00a0or just life in general. Before I understood the Dunning-Kruger effect this annoyed me\u00a0if it was clear that someone didn’t have much understanding of the topic about which they were talking. Now I realise that it may be that they don’t know enough to know that they don’t know enough and they have simply overestimated their abilities!<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/cropped-shutterstock_552045823-300x300.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0Reflection time<\/p>\nThis weeks reflection is short and sweet.<\/p>\n
Do you ever meet people who have overestimated their abilities? How do you react?\u00a0Are there ways that you can help them to gain more insight? If there are, this will help them gain a better understanding of their abilities.<\/p>\n
Conversely, do you ever meet people who are highly competent who underestimate their abilities? How do you react? Are there ways that you can help them to gain more insight? If there are, this will help them gain a better understanding of their abilities.<\/p>\n
How about you? Are there areas where you are highly competent where you underestimate your own abilities? How could you gain a more accurate picture of your abilities?<\/p>\n
And the last question, which is begging to be asked is this: are\u00a0there areas where you over-estimate your abilities? But such a question is pointless. The very fact that you have over-estimated your ability will prevent you from seeing the error of your ways. As Dunning and Kruger put it, “p<\/i>eople\u00a0<\/i>who are unskilled …\u00a0<\/i>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.” \u00a0<\/i>So, if you have over-estimated your abilities, let’s hope someone you know reads this blog-post and will help you out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you ever come across someone who clearly didn’t know what they were talking about but acted as if they were an expert? It can be frustrating, can’t it?\u00a0I discovered the Dunning-Kruger effect\u00a0years ago and it has helped me to keep my cool on such occasions. Dunning and Kruger, two American psychologists, conducted a series … Continue reading The Dunning-Kruger effect: When competence impacts on self-awareness.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,9,22,21,5,24],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reflections.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}