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One thing about Dunning-Kruger that I've never heard mentioned is self-esteem affecting one's answer. As in, if you explicitly mark a low score for yourself you
by inanutshellus 10y ago
One thing about Dunning-Kruger that I've never heard mentioned is self-esteem affecting one's answer. As in, if you explicitly mark a low score for yourself you're both divulging to others and admitting to yourself that you think you're a failure in that category. So imagine you're presented with one of these forms... what incentive/preventative is given to not let your ego's self-preservation instincts kick in and put you down as "average" (50%+) for anything and everything?
Basically, I can't imagine how you'd account for the societal matter of bravado and I posit that it has an influence on the outcome of DK experiments. e.g. if you tried to account subvert bravado and had some kind of reward at the end to say "Hey, if you successfully guess your percentile for a given skill we'll give you a cookie." (which of course would incentivize you to put "0%" and intentionally bomb the test.)
- bendykstra 10y agoMaybe you could ask participants to rank their proficiencies in a collection of skills. Then they could be tested on some or all of those skills to see if their ranking is correct.
- lambda 10y agoThey didn't ask people for their evaluations before the test; they asked after the test, and after it had been scored, to see where people thought their score ranked relative to the rest of the people who had taken the test. So, people already knew how many things they had gotten right and wrong when making their judgement. They just judged that most other people had also gotten a similar number wrong.
- forrestthewoods 10y agoThey can't possibly know the makeup of other test takers. I could be 95th percentile of the total population but still 10th percentile in a test room.
- Confusion 10y agoIt doesn't matter what causes the wrong estimate. It's still someone with a lack of ability presenting himself as if he has ability, which he will also do, for the same reasons. when more is at stake.
- rvense 10y agoWhat I think is most interesting about D-K is how it is referred to as universal, as an aspect of human psychology in general, but in fact the original studies were done in America on American college students and give quite different results when repeated in other cultures.
- maaaats 10y agoDo you have sources on that? If you read the article, it claimed that that might not be true.
- rvense 10y agoAh, actually, no, not beyond the one dismissed in TFA. I'd have to modify my previous post, then: "What I think is most interesting about D-K is how it is referred to as universal, as an aspect of human psychology in general, but in fact the original studies were done in America on American college students". As far as I can tell, TFA does not seem claim that there isn't a cultural dimension to D-K, just that we don't know what it is because no studies are cited. I would still say that it doubtful that the studies on Cornell students generalize to the entire population of the world when it comes to these things...
- sklogic 10y agoDo not forget that this very "self esteem" thingy is almost exclusively American. The other nations do not even think in such terms.
- viewer5 10y agoWhat does that mean?
- sklogic 10y agoAmericans are conditioned from the early childhood to value their "self esteem". The others do not even care.
- inanutshellus 10y agoI can't even process what you're saying. What culture doesn't acknowledge self respect, and one's place in society relative to others? Certainly there are small communities everywhere (even in America -- after all, they were prolific in America's infancy) that sought the creation of a hyper-communal and idyllic towns... but... those never scale because, well, people are selfish. But still. I just can't process what you're saying. Maybe I'm blinded by offense.
- sklogic 10y ago> What culture doesn't acknowledge self respect, and one's place in society relative to others? What culture (besides the Northern Americans) would so blindly equate self respect to self esteem? The others understand better that you can respect yourself even without the overblown, unrealistic views on your own abilities and virtues.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago> The others understand better that you can respect yourself even without the overblown, unrealistic views on your own abilities and virtues I don't think self esteem means what you think it means.