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What do you call the opposite of impostor syndrome? When someone thinks they made it to their awesome position by being awesome, whereas in fact they were just lucky?

Alternatively, how about the syndrome where someone blames bad luck for their failures, but in fact their failures are really just due to the fact that they personally suck?

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according to wikipedia, this is called the "dunning-kruger effect": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

That is a related but different phenomenon. What you're looking for is called "self-serving bias." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Self-serving_... The dunning-kruger effect is much more subtle than that, take another look at the wiki article on it.

Also related, the actor-observer bias, which describes the opposite effect, and has had more research done on it. This is a common problem in psychology, humans are so full of contradiction.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Actor%E2%80%9...

ah yes that does seem more accurate. thanks!

"jerk" would be a descriptive term.

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