Unskilled and Unaware of It

This article could also be called skilled and unaware. While the authors assert that those who are unskilled lack the metacognition to realize that they are unskilled, the skilled also seem to lack the ability to realize just how skilled they are. Each study shows the top quarter vastly underestimating their ability. In each study, it looks like once you get to the 65th percentile, people start underestimating their ability. While there is some variation in people's perceptions of their abilities, most people seem to think that they just fall in an above average range whether they're brilliant or not.

This is really interesting and has broad implications on how we interact with the world. For example, if you're brilliant, but perceive yourself as above average, you won't think you're entitled to brilliant pay - just above average pay. Likewise, someone who is far below average, but thinks that they are above average will likely believe that they are entitled to above average pay. And that has implications both social and political spheres.

However, this might just be another manifestation of the middle class effect that we see all the time. People, generally speaking, always see themselves as middle class in America regardless of where they actually fit into the social hierarchy. In both situations, one of the factors might be that one's peer group is usually less of a cross section of society and more a cross section of one's own class and therefore it's likely that you'll be somewhere in the middle of that smaller grouping. Likewise, one's peers are also likely to be of the same intelligence level and therefore that becomes skewed.

Before I get jumped on with that last bit, I did read the part where the unintelligent not only misplaced their percentile, but also couldn't figure out how many they got wrong. But that's also influenced by where you think you placed relative to others. If you think you placed above average and the exam was meant to test a variety of people, you're decently likely to assume that you scored better than you did.

Well, maybe I'm full of hogwash. Still, it's really interesting to think about what it means socio-politically when people assume that they're in a different place than they are (intelligence, production, etc.).

The article is persuasive in showing that people tend overestimate their own skill level. For example, people who have very poor social and intellectual skills (below 25th percentile ) still seem to think they are "above average" (roughly 62nd percentile).

However, it is also very clear from their graphs that, overall, people simply seem to map the normal range of abilities (0% to 100%) into the compressed range (50% to 100%). I wonder if this has anything to do with how we grade in school, ... namely, anything below 50% is a "failure".

I'm unskilled but I am aware of it.

I can hear the seething controlled anger or my co-workers perception of me that I do nothing or am worthless. I can feel the tiny neutron star of resentment go off every time they have to talk to me.

I'm an expert on nothing but my only defense is to take work no one wants.

I'm trying to fix it.

The real takeaway from this data is not just that the below average half tends to significantly overestimate its abilities (although that is supported), or that the extremely effective tend to underestimate their abilities (also supported), but that, almost completely regardless of skill, people tend to estimate their own abilities to fall within the third quartile. To me, this seems like reasonable evidence for the otherwise anecdotal fact that (at least for some fields) those who are not themselves competent at a subject are poor judges of competency at that subject, since their primary tool for making skill assessments will be to assess the confidence others have in their skills.

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." - Shakespeare

You can also find similar quotes attributed to Socrates and Lao Tzu.

Dunning-Kruger has been the (ironic?) favorite fodder of holier-than-thou tech scenesters since the early days of EFNet, Slashdot, then reddit, now HN, and I'm sure it'll make repeated appearances in the next place we all migrate to after this place gets overrun by the next group of people that so inconveniently attenuate the smugness flying around in our little echo chamber of eliteness.