Dunning–Kruger effect

As Dunning - Kruger effect refers to a variety of cognitive distortion, namely the tendency of incompetent people to overestimate their own abilities and to underestimate the achievements of more competent people. The popular scientific concept goes back to a publication by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of 1999. In the psychological literature itself, he has so far played only a minor role, but in academic publications outside of psychology as well as in blogs and discussion forums on the Internet.

"If someone is incompetent, then he can not know that he is incompetent. [ ... ] The skills that you need to find a proper solution, [ are ] precisely those skills to decide when a solution is correct. "

Dunning and Kruger had noticed in previous studies that about when you enter text, play chess or driving ignorance often leads to more self-confidence than knowledge. At Cornell University, the two scientists investigated this effect in further experiments, and came in 1999 to the result that less competent people

• Tend to overestimate their own abilities,
• Not recognize superior abilities in others,
• The extent of their incompetence are not able to recognize
• Not only increase through education or exercise their competence, but also can learn, and see others better.

Dunning and Kruger showed that poor performance with greater self-esteem go hand in hand as a stronger performance. However, the correlation between self-assessment and actual performance is not negative, higher self-assessment does not turn tend to be associated with weaker performance.

In 2000, Dunning and Kruger were awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology for their study.