4 ms·

I agree, not unimportantly the effect is much more pronounced in the bottom group. When someone overestimates their abilities by 20% it is far less drastic tha

• Thorrez 7y ago
  500%? I don't think you can compare percentiles like that. Let's say someone estimates his percentile to be the 3rd percentile (aka 97% of people are better) and in reality he's in the 1st percentile (99% of people are better). Did he overestimate his ability by 200%? I wouldn't say so, I would say he was very very close. Even at non-extreme percentiles I don't think such a comparison works. For example in some area it might be that people at the 10th percentile know nearly the same amount as people at the 50th percentile. If it's some area that most people know little about. So the abilities of someone at the 10th percentile would be nearly the same as the abilities of someone at the 50th percentile. So overestimating your percentile by a lot is not the same as overestimating your abilities by a lot.
• raxxorrax 7y ago
  What I see in practice is that the effect is often used to discredit the competency of people like the WP author did. > which itself, ironically, is part of the DK effect I think the effect can help you come to the conclusion many experts in fields come to after a while: The larger your knowledge, the more you are aware of your ignorance. I am sure there is an English idiom that describes it more gracefully. Maybe that is the intersection to the 20%. Enthusiastically pointing out the discrepancy on the other end of the curve is most probably an indicator that you might have fallen "victim" to the effect itself.