We have seen the Dunning-Kruger effect in the past. In his famous experiments, he collected data from 65 Cornell University graduates to verify what is known as the “above-average effect”. They made four predictions which formed the hypothesis that they wanted to test.
- Incompetent people overestimate their ability
- Incompetent individuals suffer from deficient meta-cognition abilities
- Incompetent people struggle with social comparison abilities
- Incompetent individuals can improve their insights by making them more competent
Signals and Noises
Nuhfer et al. used random number simulations to show plots of similar nature, suggesting issues with the study and the convention of using percentile plots. The graph convention holds ceiling effects wherein the lower quantile people overestimate their competency the most (more room available towards the top than the bottom). The top quantile (the competent participants) cannot overestimate by as much.
