
Dunning-Kruger effect - yread
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
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camccann
The concluding remarks from Dunning and Kruger's paper make me chuckle:

 _In sum, we present this article as an exploration into why people tend to
hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves. We propose
that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only
do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their
incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Although we feel we have
done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it
empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with
one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish. That worry is that this article
may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication. Let us
assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a
sin we have committed knowingly._

I put the link in another comment already, but here's a copy of the paper in
html format for anyone interested:
<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html>

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andreyf
Except that when you ask someone "how well do you think you did on that
test?", they hear "how well would you like me to think you think you did on
that test?". The results are better explained, IMO, by noting that people tend
to declare themselves as "about average" when asked about their intelligence,
in an attempt to not appear snobby or lacking in confidence. For both
extremes, evaluating oneself in the edge quartile is socially inappropriate.

Also, consider the correlation between schooling, ability to take
grammar/logic tests, and modesty. In my experience, modesty is a social norm
significantly correlated with schooling: have you ever heard someone brag
about having studied at Princeton?

The experiment lacked the proper controls - for example, asking Princeton math
majors how well they thought they knew political science, physics, or
astronomy. I would hypothesize that they overestimate their competence (saying
"about average") as much as anyone else. Another way to test this hypothesis
would be to ask people to rate their own performance, then declare publicly
how close their guesses were, and publicly award those with the best self-
awareness.

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abstractbill
I found this part interesting:

 _In a series of studies, they examined self-assessment of logical reasoning
skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores,
the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank_

This implies there's some reasonably objective test of humor. Does anyone know
how that might work?

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camccann
Well, I can tell you how Dunning and Kruger did it--they borrowed a bunch of
jokes from various sources (famous comedians, joke books, &c.), then had some
professional comedians rate the quality of the jokes. The assumption was that
making a living in comedy probably requires being able to recognize when
something is or isn't funny.

 _We created a 30-item questionnaire made up of jokes we felt were of varying
comedic value. (...) To assess joke quality, we contacted several professional
comedians via electronic mail and asked them to rate each joke on a scale
ranging from 1 ( not at all funny ) to 11 ( very funny ). (...) Although the
ratings provided by the eight comedians were moderately reliable ( a = .72),
an analysis of interrater correlations found that one (and only one)
comedian's ratings failed to correlate positively with the others (mean r = -
.09). We thus excluded this comedian's ratings in our calculation of the humor
value of each joke, yielding a final a of .76. Expert ratings revealed that
jokes ranged from the not so funny (e.g., "Question: What is big as a man, but
weighs nothing? Answer: His shadow." Mean expert rating = 1.3) to the very
funny (e.g., "If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to
tell him is 'God is crying.' And if he asks why God is crying, another cute
thing to tell him is 'probably because of something you did.'" Mean expert
rating = 9.6)._

<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html>

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baddox
I guess I would score poorly on this. I don't find most comedians very funny.

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pavs
Sorry for being a bit off-topic. I have been reading up on psychology a bit
recently and I would love to get some book recommendations. I am more
interested in social psychology and behavioral psychology but would love to
brush up on my knowledge on general psychology as well.

Currently I am reading my first psychology book in ten years: "Strangers to
Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious" quite an interesting read.

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andreyf
I had a long-standing interest in psychology, but haven't found a single book
worth crap. Psychologists seem to obsess over fancy terminology and say-so
stories with absolutely no conception of anything remotely like a controlled
experiment. The one exception I've found is this blog:

<http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/>

Although most of his posts just complain about the lack of quality in medical
and psychiatric publishing. That, and his definition of narcism (creating a
persona and acting it out) is without doubt the most insightful model of the
psyche I'd ever stumbled on.

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pfedor
The follow up research which refuted some of the Kruger and Dunning's
conclusions:
[http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kburson/files/bursonlarrickklayma...](http://sitemaker.umich.edu/kburson/files/bursonlarrickklayman.pdf)

