https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/
"As you can see, the findings reported by Kruger and Dunning are often interpreted to suggest that the less competent people are, the more competent they think they are. People who perform worst at a task tend to think theyāre godās gift to said task, and the people who can actually do said task often display excessive modesty. I suspect we find this sort of explanation compelling because it appeals to our implicit just-world theories: weād like to believe that people who obnoxiously proclaim their excellence at X, Y, and Z must really not be so very good at X, Y, and Z at all, and must be (over)compensating for some actual deficiency; itās much less pleasant to imagine that people who go around shoving their (alleged) superiority in our faces might really be better than us at what they do.
Unfortunately, Kruger and Dunning never actually provided any support for this type of just-world view; their studies categorically didnāt show that incompetent people are more confident or arrogant than competent people. What they did show is this:"
From Quora:
"People underestimate the discrepancy between themselves and experts, yes, but, with individual exceptions,
they don't think themselves experts if they're not. So, in that sense, in the sense that the popular press reported it, the DK Effect doesn't really exist.
And that brings me to the second point: the effect is statistical. Nobody really knows the causal mechanisms involved, and itās just speculation to say that the discrepancy is caused by a paradoxical lack of meta-awareness. Whatās more, the DK effect can adequately be explained by regression to the mean. That is, so long as everyone's estimation of their own skill level is somewhat noisy and imperfect (and it is), most people will think theyāre more average than they are. If most people assume theyāre average, that means more-highly-skilled people, being above average and not realizing how far above average they are, are likely to underestimate their abilities, while less-highly-skilled people, being below average and not realizing how far below average they are, are likely to overestimate them. In this sense, the DK effect is closely related to the chronic insecurity and impostor syndrome that so many highly functional professionals feel.
Quoting once again from the article,
I think the juryās still out to some extent, but at minimum, I think itās clear that much of the Dunning-Kruger effect reflects either statistical artifact (regression to the mean), or much more general cognitive biases (the tendency to self-enhance and/or to use oneās subjective experience as a guide to oneās standing in relation to others). This doesnāt mean that the meta-cognitive explanation preferred by Dunning, Kruger and colleagues canāt hold in some situations; it very well may be that in some cases, and to some extent, peopleās lack of skill is really what prevents them from accurately determining their standing in relation to others. But I think our default position should be to prefer the alternative explanations Iāve discussed above, because theyāre (a) simpler, (b) more general (they explain lots of other phenomena), and (c) necessary (frankly, itād be amazing if regression to the mean didnāt explain at least part of the effect!).
To be honest, the DK Effect is something has really only taken off in the blogosphere in the last couple years. It's passed along, mentioned, and repeated not because there's a huge body of psychological research behind it but because there's rhetorical value in being able to dismiss people you disagree with or who offend you as cretins too incompetent to realize they don't understand."
"As you can see, the findings reported by Kruger and Dunning are often interpreted to suggest that the less competent people are, the more competent they think they are. People who perform worst at a task tend to think theyāre godās gift to said task, and the people who can actually do said task often display excessive modesty. I suspect we find this sort of explanation compelling because it appeals to our implicit just-world theories: weād like to believe that people who obnoxiously proclaim their excellence at X, Y, and Z must really not be so very good at X, Y, and Z at all, and must be (over)compensating for some actual deficiency; itās much less pleasant to imagine that people who go around shoving their (alleged) superiority in our faces might really be better than us at what they do.
Unfortunately, Kruger and Dunning never actually provided any support for this type of just-world view; their studies categorically didnāt show that incompetent people are more confident or arrogant than competent people. What they did show is this:"
From Quora:
"People underestimate the discrepancy between themselves and experts, yes, but, with individual exceptions,
they don't think themselves experts if they're not. So, in that sense, in the sense that the popular press reported it, the DK Effect doesn't really exist.
And that brings me to the second point: the effect is statistical. Nobody really knows the causal mechanisms involved, and itās just speculation to say that the discrepancy is caused by a paradoxical lack of meta-awareness. Whatās more, the DK effect can adequately be explained by regression to the mean. That is, so long as everyone's estimation of their own skill level is somewhat noisy and imperfect (and it is), most people will think theyāre more average than they are. If most people assume theyāre average, that means more-highly-skilled people, being above average and not realizing how far above average they are, are likely to underestimate their abilities, while less-highly-skilled people, being below average and not realizing how far below average they are, are likely to overestimate them. In this sense, the DK effect is closely related to the chronic insecurity and impostor syndrome that so many highly functional professionals feel.
Quoting once again from the article,
I think the juryās still out to some extent, but at minimum, I think itās clear that much of the Dunning-Kruger effect reflects either statistical artifact (regression to the mean), or much more general cognitive biases (the tendency to self-enhance and/or to use oneās subjective experience as a guide to oneās standing in relation to others). This doesnāt mean that the meta-cognitive explanation preferred by Dunning, Kruger and colleagues canāt hold in some situations; it very well may be that in some cases, and to some extent, peopleās lack of skill is really what prevents them from accurately determining their standing in relation to others. But I think our default position should be to prefer the alternative explanations Iāve discussed above, because theyāre (a) simpler, (b) more general (they explain lots of other phenomena), and (c) necessary (frankly, itād be amazing if regression to the mean didnāt explain at least part of the effect!).
To be honest, the DK Effect is something has really only taken off in the blogosphere in the last couple years. It's passed along, mentioned, and repeated not because there's a huge body of psychological research behind it but because there's rhetorical value in being able to dismiss people you disagree with or who offend you as cretins too incompetent to realize they don't understand."
