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An explanation I am not seeing: People may self-report opinions of their own performance that they feel are socially acceptable or socially protective of themselves. So it reverts to the mean because it remains within The Overton Window so to speak.

If your objective performance falls far outside the norm, even if you know it and are confident this is true, people may not accept that fact and trying to insist on getting credit for it won't get you credit. It will get push-back. It will get denial. It may even result in harassment.

If your objective performance is poor, you may be subconsciously hoping to influence the outcome positively. Most forms of assessment aren't entirely objective. To whatever degree you can protect yourself from negative social consequences by suggesting to other people that your performance was within some acceptable and expected norm, it is in your best interest to do so.

People who habitually do this kind of thing at work or in other socially meaningful settings may be unable to turn that habit off for purposes of a psychological study. They may not even be consciously aware of it. It's just a thing they do without really planning it. It's what they have always done.

For easy tasks, it may have the most impact to fudge a little and say "My performance is sort of normal-ish. Nothing to see here. Move along." whether you perform abnormally well or abysmally. Those are tasks most likely to not matter so much, not have high stakes, be easily done by just about anyone and so on.

In other words, if you suck at taking out the trash, probably anyone in the office can gather up the trash and take it out. It's not likely to be a firing offense. They will just have someone else do it who doesn't drop everything everywhere all the time and never bother you about your failure to be good at it.

But if they hired you for your PhD in mathematics, your understanding of complex math actually matters. You aren't readily replaceable. Trying to fudge about how well you understand it and claim greater ability than you have is something people will take great offense at. Being a little modest about it can help you keep your job while reducing expectations.

There can be a lot of benefits to managing the expectations of other people who know you can do something that's hard but don't understand the conditions under which you can pull that off, how much prep time you need, etc. It is actively problematic for everyone to think you can do (amazing thing) anytime and all the time with no lead time and no recovery time. That's a great recipe for burn out and other disasters.




I’m a little worried about supplying any explanation because the DK paper didn’t study the general population at all, and nobody who participated was incompetent or lacking meta cognitive skills or representative of any of the other exaggerated terms they used. The participants were all Cornell undergrads volunteering for extra credit. That alone is such a huge red flag on the validity of this study that presumes to make bold claims about general behavior, I honestly can’t understand why this paper has had so much attention or traction. The participants were self-selected, all the same age, all the same socioeconomic bracket (statistically speaking), all needed extra credit in their psych class, all admitted to a prestigious school, and all have been told by their family how smart they are.

> People may self-report opinions of their own performance that they feel are socially acceptable or socially protective of themselves. So it reverts to the mean because it remains within The Overton Window so to speak.

> If your objective performance is poor [...]

The DK paper didn’t study objective performance, it studied perceived performance. They didn’t exactly have participants opine on their own performance at all, they were asked to rank themselves within the group. That is a relative opinion, and it means the participant is evaluating the other participants’ abilities too. It also means everyone in the study was just guessing, which is the biggest reason why I think Tal is right, that this is nothing more than noise leading to regression to the mean.

> But if they hired you for your PhD in mathematics [...]

DK did not study any difficult cognitive tasks akin to research or complex math either. The paper only had 4 tasks: ability to get a joke, some standardized test logic questions, a little English grammar, and grading other people’s tests.

I’m not sure if the things I’m pointing out support your theory or not. Mostly I suspect DK is specious and contagious because it lets people justify their own negative judgements of others, so in that sense I think using DK as an explanation of someone’s behavior is a way to feel socially acceptable and be socially protective of one’s self. It’s just unfortunate that the common judgements and conclusions with this study are almost always unjustified because the paper is so widely misunderstood.


I’m not sure if the things I’m pointing out support your theory or not.

It's not a theory. It's a comment on a public forum, not a PhD thesis.

I've had some pertinent classes, like Intro to Psychology, Social Psychology, and Negotiation and Conflict Management. In my youth, I spent about 3.5 years in therapy to sort out baggage from childhood trauma. I've journaled and blogged for a lot of years, so introspection and trying to figure out what makes me tick is a longstanding habit.

I raised two special-needs sons who don't intuitively understand social stuff, so trying to explain things to them really helped hone my understanding of some things. I had to up my game by quite a lot to help them get a meaningful and useful understanding of social phenomenon.

Social phenomenon are inherently hard to find good information about. Studies tend to be really bad. People who know they are participating in a study almost by definition don't behave like the do "normally."

I continue to talk with my sons about social phenomenon because it remains an ongoing area of interest. My sons and I talk fairly often about what constitutes a good source of social insight and what doesn't. I comment about it sometimes on HN because I hang here and sometimes people find my comments of value.

It's my opinion. My opinions on such topics seem to generally be on more solid footing than average. They usually aren't, per se, backed up by some kind of scientific study, though they are generally informed by gathering solid tidbits of useful info over the years.

If you don't agree with it, it's totes fine.


Sorry, I meant theory casually, as a synonym for the word you used, explanation.

I think I’m agreeing with you, and I think it’s an interesting explanation and a valuable comment. I have no doubt that you’re right that people are socially protective, and some people pull back publicly to fit in. It’s just that as a response to DK or to Tal, I feel like it might be mostly orthogonal and independent. I’m pretty sure that the DK study itself didn’t experience or measure this kind of social self-protection, because of the methods described in the paper.

What I disagree with is the DK paper. They make broad generalizations and speculations about behavior throughout that their own data do not support. And the paper seems to be almost completely misinterpreted. Despite the data and the statements in the paper, everyone seems to think that the paper shows confidence being an indicator of lack of skill. It doesn’t help that the paper’s title misleadingly walks you right into that idea.

> Studies tend to be really bad.

You can say that again.


> It may even result in harassment.

Haha, I don't know why, but as soon as I read that sentence, I thought "Is this Doreen Michele?" and checked your username and it was! Something unique about your writing.

I used to have a lot of these kinds of concerns about how I'm perceived and in hindsight it held me back and I regret things I didn't do because of it. Now I have achieved things that are clearly respectable and I don't feel any need to prove myself. Instead, I'm happy to look like a fool. I also have modest enough ambitions that I don't need to worry about the consequences of people's perceptions for things like promotions or other opportunities. I create my own opportunities.




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