If everyone thinks they are slightly above average, isn't this inevitable? If everyone thinks they are slightly above average, people who are slightly above average are going to be the most accurate at predicting where they land?
Yes, it’s inevitable. And this study only asked Cornell undergrads what they think of themselves - people who were taught to believe they are above average, and also people who got into a selective school and probably all had higher than average scores on standardized tests. Is it surprising in any way that this group estimated their ability at above average?
That essentially follows from everyone assume they are slightly above average. That's also the crux of the refutation and why the whole autocorrelation is a red hering, even if we all would just self assess completely randomly, that actually confirms the Dunning-Kruger effect is real (because if we self assess randomly worse performance are more likely to overestimate).
We could argue that this is not surprising, but the "surprising" bit is that the curves show that better performers are actually more skilled at assessing their performance, which incidentally was also confirmed by the followup studies.
There are those that don't know, and don't know that they don't know. They evaluate themselves the highest.
There are those that know, and don't know that they don't know. They evaluate themselves a bit better than those before.
There are those that know, and know that they don't know. They evaluate themselves worst than those before them. This is the d-k valley, imposter syndrome, confidence issues.
There are those that know, and know that they know. They are much better at evaluating themselves than those before them. They have experience to know what they know, and what they dont know, and they still continue to underrate themselves vs the first bunch, but they are more accurate and closer to the truth.
Anyway thats how I always understood d-k.