And Just What Is The Dunning-Krugar Effect?



Taken from my G+ comments on the Net:

John Kleese quotation: “If you're very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize you are very, very stupid? You'd have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are. This explains almost the entirety of Fox News.”

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Joe Comohoyo, Doctor of Divinity
3:13 PM
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Dunning–Kruger effect




http://dunning.socialpsychology.org/
David Dunning

At its most general, my research focuses on accuracy and illusion in human judgment. In my social psychological work, I am interested in how, and when, people's perceptions of themselves and their surrounding differ from an objectively definable reality. In my psycholegal work, I concentrate on accuracy and error in eyewitness testimony. 

My social psychological work focuses on two related phenomena concerning self and social judgment. First, I am interested in why people tend to have overly favorable and objectively indefensible views of their own abilities. For example, a full 94% of college professors say they do "above average" work, although it is impossible for nearly everyone to be above average. Second, I am interested in why people use themselves as the "model of excellence" in judgments of other people. For example, ask people what it takes to be an "effective leader," and they tend to describe someone who resembles themselves. Task-oriented people (e.g., they describe themselves as persistent, ambitious) tend to cite task-skills as important in leadership. People-oriented individuals (e.g., they describe themselves as friendly and tactful) tend to emphasize social skills in their definition of the effective leader. In past work, I have found that the second phenomenon (using the self as model of excellence) produces the first phenomenon describe above (too many people describe themselves as above average). I have also found that using the self as the model of excellence in judging others leads to many disagreements in social judgment. In current work, I am focusing on why people tend to define excellence so egocentrically. But, more importantly, I am looking for circumstances in which people will stop using themselves as the standard of judgment. 

My work in eyewitness testimony is a search for something, anything that might help people to distinguish accurate eyewitnesses from erroneous ones. In recently published work, we focus on witnesses making identifications of a perpetrator from a line-up. We found that asking witnesses how they reached their identifications went a good way toward telling whether they had made an accurate ones. Accurate witnesses tended to have difficulty providing a description of how they had reached their decisions (e.g., "I don't know why, I just recognized him."). Inaccurate witnesses tended to have long-winded explanations focusing on process of elimination (e.g., I compared the photos to each other in order to narrow the choices."). In more recent work, we are trying to extend this research by refining these measures, to find more valid and reliable measures of eyewitness accuracy and error.

Last edited by user: November 26, 1999
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Dunning–Kruger effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitiveinability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. Conversely, highly skilled individuals tend to underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
As David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others".[1]

Historical antecedents[edit]

Although the Dunning–Kruger effect was formulated in 1999, Dunning and Kruger have noted similar observations byphilosophers and scientists, including Confucius ("Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance"),[2]Socrates ("I know that I know nothing"), Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision"),[11] andCharles Darwin, whom they quoted in their original paper ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge").[1]

Geraint Fuller, commenting on the paper, noted that Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment in As You Like It("The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole" (V.i)).[14]

See also[edit]

Psychology portal
Curse of knowledge
Four stages of competence
Hanlon's razor
Impostor syndrome
Not even wrong
Overconfidence effect
Self-efficacy
Self-serving bias
Superiority complex




Four stages of competence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the "conscious competence" learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

History[edit]

Initially described as “Four Stages for Learning Any New Skill”, the theory was developed at the Gordon Training International by its employee Noel Burch in the 1970s.[1] It has since been frequently attributed to Abraham Maslow, although the model does not appear in his major works.[2]

The Four Stages of Learning provides a model for learning. It suggests that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know, or unconscious of their incompetence. As they recognize their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then consciously use it. Eventually, the skill can be utilized without it being consciously thought through: the individual is said to have then acquired unconscious competence. [3]

Several elements, including helping someone 'know what they don't know' or recognize a blind spot, can be compared to some elements of a Johari window, although Johari deals with self-awareness, while the four stages of competence deals with learning stages.

The four stages of competence[edit]

Unconscious incompetence

The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage.[2] The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.[3]

Conscious incompetence

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.[4]

Conscious competence

The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.[3]

Unconscious competence

The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

Fifth stage[edit]

The model is expanded by some users to include a fifth stage, which is not part of the original model from Gordon Training International. The exact composition of this stage varies between authors. Some refer to reflective ability, or "conscious competence of unconscious competence", as being the fifth stage.

Another definition refers to the fifth stage as 'enlightened competence' described as "the person has not only mastered the physical skill to a highly efficient and accurate level which does not anymore require of him conscious, deliberate and careful execution of the skill but instead done instinctively and reflexively, requiring minimum efforts with maximum quality output, and is able to understand the very dynamics and explanation of his own physical skills. In other words, he comprehends fully and accurately the what, when, how and why of his own skill and possibly those of others on the same skill he has. In addition to this, he is able to transcend and reflect on the physical skill itself and be able to improve on how it is acquired and learned at even greater efficiency with lower energy investment. Having fully understood all necessary steps and components of the skill to be learned and the manner how they are dynamically integrated to produce the desired level of overall competence, he is thereby able to teach the skill to others in a manner that is effective and expedient." (Lorgene A Mata, PhD, December 2004)[2]




This progress from learner to teacher brings to my mind the characteristic of my favorite teachers – they do teach the course at a higher level than the book, bringing out their own expertise in a simple but exciting way. Rather than overwhelming the students, they entice them with fascinating information that excites them and opens their mind to as much knowledge on the subject as they can find.

Such a teacher will create students who act on their own to learn more widely and deeply. Some students complain about a teacher lecturing too much of the time, and I would too if he or she doesn't invite student participation at all, but some professors I have had were so interesting in what they presented that they actually made learning easier for me to grasp and literally “soak in.” Others put me to sleep by droning on, covering the same material that was in the textbook, or worse still picking out individuals to quiz them on what they supposedly had read. These people may be very well versed in their subject, but they need a good public speaking course – or maybe they are just at a point that they should retire. Maybe they themselves are bored with the subject.