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Because of the effect that is actually found (variance is higher the less achievement) it follows that people you encounter who wildly overestimate their abilit

by jtc331 4y ago

Because of the effect that is actually found (variance is higher the less achievement) it follows that people you encounter who wildly overestimate their ability are more likely to people who are poor performers (the same is true for the inverse, but they obviously don't stand out anecdotally to us). IMO that explains why Dunning Kruger seems intuitively correct even if the conclusion they drew isn't actually correct.

seventytwo 4y ago
Agree. This should have been the original conclusion of DK, if they hadn’t made the mistake. Another way to show this would have been to keep the auto correlation plot, but compare it to the same plot with statistical noise. With infinite random data, the expected value for self-assessment would be 50% score, regardless of actual score - a flat line through the chart. It would then be significant to find a non-flat line, as DK did. It’s not inconceivable that with a smaller sample, you’d get come biasing, where lesser skilled people would over estimate, and higher skilled people under estimate. The follow up studies seem to suggest there’s not really a bias like that, but that there is a “honing” of the general ability to estimate your own outcome, which makes sense. > Although there is no hint of a Dunning-Kruger effect, Figure 11 does show an interesting pattern. Moving from left to right, the spread in self-assessment error tends to decrease with more education. In other words, professors are generally better at assessing their ability than are freshmen. That makes sense. Notice, though, that this increasing accuracy is different than the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is about systemic bias in the average assessment. No such bias exists in Nuhfer’s data.
caylus 4y ago
> people you encounter who wildly overestimate their ability are more likely to people who are poor performers How is this helpful? You won't know whether someone is "overestimating" their ability until you learn both their estimated and actual performance, at which point you don't need to guess whether they're "likely" to have poor actual performance.
- jtc331 4y ago
  It's an explanation for why our anecdotal intuition concludes what it does here. I think you're misreading the point of my comment.

by jtc331 4y ago

seventytwo 4y ago

Agree. This should have been the original conclusion of DK, if they hadn’t made the mistake. Another way to show this would have been to keep the auto correlation plot, but compare it to the same plot with statistical noise. With infinite random data, the expected value for self-assessment would be 50% score, regardless of actual score - a flat line through the chart. It would then be significant to find a non-flat line, as DK did. It’s not inconceivable that with a smaller sample, you’d get come biasing, where lesser skilled people would over estimate, and higher skilled people under estimate. The follow up studies seem to suggest there’s not really a bias like that, but that there is a “honing” of the general ability to estimate your own outcome, which makes sense. > Although there is no hint of a Dunning-Kruger effect, Figure 11 does show an interesting pattern. Moving from left to right, the spread in self-assessment error tends to decrease with more education. In other words, professors are generally better at assessing their ability than are freshmen. That makes sense. Notice, though, that this increasing accuracy is different than the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is about systemic bias in the average assessment. No such bias exists in Nuhfer’s data.

caylus 4y ago

> people you encounter who wildly overestimate their ability are more likely to people who are poor performers How is this helpful? You won't know whether someone is "overestimating" their ability until you learn both their estimated and actual performance, at which point you don't need to guess whether they're "likely" to have poor actual performance.

jtc331 4y ago
It's an explanation for why our anecdotal intuition concludes what it does here. I think you're misreading the point of my comment.