3 ms·

What was really enlightening for me was that DKE is really just plotting two lines, perceived ability and actual ability. Now if people were perfectly accurate

What was really enlightening for me was that DKE is really just plotting two lines, perceived ability and actual ability. Now if people were perfectly accurate those lines would be drawn on top of each other. But because either people underestimate their differences or correctly guess their true ability which the test doesn't full capture. Let's make the perceived ability line flatter. People tend to overestimate their own ability, so we should move the perceived ability line up which leads to an intersection on the right. Causing us to find that the best performers are the most accurate, explaining DKE. But the harder we make a task the more we push that perceived ability line down. And if we make a task sufficiently hard then the worst performers are the most accurate judge of their own ability showing the opposite of DKE, due to the intersection being pushed left. So really DKE is an artifact.

philwelch 6y ago
Imagine a graph where the x-axis is competence and the y-axis is self-perceived competence. Quadrant II of that graph is Dunning-Kruger. Quadrant IV is imposter syndrome. Quadrants I and III aren’t talked about but I suspect most people, most of the time, end up in these quadrants if you ask them about their ability to repair helicopter engines or perform open-heart surgery.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  "Almost no one can perform open heart surgery well" and "I am better then the average person at open heart surgery" are fully consistent personal opinions one could have.
alisonkisk 6y ago
Why so? > But the harder we make a task the more we push that perceived ability line down. That's only true if people misperceive how hard the task is across the population. Or if the measurement is trivialized because the distribution of actual performance is ovwrwhelemedr by noise.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  The third section of the article titled "3. The instrumental role of task difficulty." goes into how "people misperceive how hard the task is across the population" based on task difficulty, and quotes a good amount of research that shows this is true. It seems pretty intuitive why people would use task difficulty as a heuristic for relative performance.

philwelch 6y ago

Imagine a graph where the x-axis is competence and the y-axis is self-perceived competence. Quadrant II of that graph is Dunning-Kruger. Quadrant IV is imposter syndrome. Quadrants I and III aren’t talked about but I suspect most people, most of the time, end up in these quadrants if you ask them about their ability to repair helicopter engines or perform open-heart surgery.

alisonkisk 6y ago
"Almost no one can perform open heart surgery well" and "I am better then the average person at open heart surgery" are fully consistent personal opinions one could have.

alisonkisk 6y ago

Why so? > But the harder we make a task the more we push that perceived ability line down. That's only true if people misperceive how hard the task is across the population. Or if the measurement is trivialized because the distribution of actual performance is ovwrwhelemedr by noise.

JamesBarney 6y ago
The third section of the article titled "3. The instrumental role of task difficulty." goes into how "people misperceive how hard the task is across the population" based on task difficulty, and quotes a good amount of research that shows this is true. It seems pretty intuitive why people would use task difficulty as a heuristic for relative performance.