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Notes -
The Dunning-Kruger effect is autocorrelation
Huh. I can only apologize for the relatively bare link, but I feel like it's worth drawing attention to something so widely accepted yet utterly worthless, especially when it comes up so often here.
The thing about the DK effect is that it makes intuitive sense. To extend it past the realm of typical human intelligence, an ant or a chimp isn't very good at knowing how dumb they are because they're not very good at most things. However, I suspect that the average dumb (human) person does know they're a bit dim, so it confuses me how this finding can even arise.
Is it possible to salvage a non-trivial version of the DKE? The one we know and once loved literally works for random data, so that's right out. In other words, what's the cut-off where a stupid person becomes smart enough to know they're stupid, or at least worse than their peers?*
*In a more general sense than a chimp knowing he's not as strong or big as the alpha male.
I thought the DK effect had been debunked (at least in it's common pop framing) for quite a while? I thought the idea that good people under-estimate and bad people over-estimate, was known to be kind of a mythical tack-on to the central more boring claim that self-assessment isn't super reliable.
And, I thought the tack-on came from misunderstanding the one-directional limiting effects on mis-assessment at the top and bottom of a performace scale.
That is the better you are, the harder it objectively to overstate your competence. and vice versa. being good doesn't cause you to understate your ability, it reduces the error in overstating it.
Imagine 3 people who all take a 3-point basketball shot. All three are likely to correctly estimate their ability. A airballs, B hits the backboard, C makes it. they still respectively rank themselves correctly.
3 more people all take the shot. All three are likely to over-estimate their ability. D airballs, E hits the backboard, F makes it. D guesses he tied for second, E guesses he did the best, F also guesses he did the best.
3 more people all take the shot. All three are likely to under-estimate their ability. G airballs, H hits the backboard, I makes it. G guesses he did the worst, H also guesses he did the worst, I guesses he tied for first.
In these three groups of performance tiers: air-ballers, backboarders, and shot-makers, you have an even mix of estimation ability in each. Yet:
A,D,G collectively slightly over-estimated their ability B,E,H collectively got their average ability correct C,F,I collectively slightly underestimated their abiliy
Traditional Pop-understanding of DK effect, misinterprets this result that ADGs think they're better than they are and CFI thikn they're worse, when that's really kind of inverted. It's rather that ADG has less room to err down and CFI less room to err up.
You could run this again with many more groups and even give ADG a stronger propensity to underestimate and CFI a stronger propensity to overestimate, and you'd still get the DK effect.
Compare:
ADDGGGGGG -> still slightly over estimates their ability on average CFFFFFFFFII -> still slightly under estimates their ability on average
Even though the individuals in the group actually have the opposite propensity.
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