Why the unskilled are unaware: Further explorations of (absent) self-insight among the incompetent

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Volumn 105, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 98-121

  Ehrlinger, Joyce ^a   Johnson, Kerri ^b   Banner, Matthew ^c   Dunning, David ^c   Kruger, Justin ^d  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^c Cornell University ^*  (United States)

^d NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Competence; Metacognition; Self confidence; Self insight

Indexed keywords

EID: 37349048455     PISSN: 07495978     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2007.05.002     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Ackerman P.L., Beier M.E., and Bowen K.R. What we really know about our abilities and our knowledge. Personality and Individual Differences 33 (2002) 587-605
2. Aiken L.S., and West S.G. Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions (1991), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA
3. Alicke M.D. Global self-evaluation as determined by the desirability and controllability of trait adjectives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49 (1985) 1621-1630
4. Alicke M.D., and Govorun O. The better-than-average effect. In: Alicke M.D., Dunning D.A., and Krueger J.I. (Eds). The self in social judgment. Studies in self and identity (2005), Psychology Press, New York, NY 85-106
5. Arkes H.R., Christensen C., Lai C., and Blumer C. Two methods of reducing overconfidence. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 39 (1987) 133-144
6. Ashton R.H. Pressure and performance in accounting decision settings: Paradoxical effects of incentives, feedback and justification. Journal of Accounting Research 28 (1990) 148-180
7. Atkinson J.W. Towards experimental analysis of human motivation in terms of motives, expectancies, and incentives. In: Atkinson J. (Ed). Motives in fantasy, action and society (1958), Van Nostrand, New York
8. Awasthi V., and Pratt J. The effects of monetary incentives on effort and decision performance: The role of cognitive characteristics. The Accounting Review 65 (1990) 797-811
9. Baumeister R.F. A self-presentational view of social phenomena. Psychological Bulletin 91 (1982) 3-26
10. Baumeister R.F., and Newman L.S. Self-regulation of cognitive inference and decision processes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20 (1994) 3-19
11. Blackwell L.A., Trzesniewski K.H., and Dweck C.S. Theories of intelligence and achievement across the junior high school transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development 78 (2007) 246-263
12. Bollen K.A. Structural equations with latent variables (1989), Wiley and Sons, New York
13. Brown J.D. Evaluations of self and others: Self-enhancement biases in social judgments. Social Cognition 4 (1986) 353-376
14. Burson K.A., Larrick R.P., and Klayman J. Skilled or unskilled, but still unaware of it: How perceptions of difficulty drive miscalibration in relative comparisons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90 (2006) 60-77
15. Camerer C., and Hogarth R. The effects of financial incentives in experiments: A review and capital-labor production framework. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 19 (1999) 7-42
16. Carney D.R., and Harrigan J.A. It takes one to know one: Interpersonal sensitivity is related to accurate assessments of others' interpersonal sensitivity. Emotion 3 (2003) 194-200
17. Chi M.T.H., Glaser R., and Rees E. Expertise in problem-solving. In: Sternberg R. (Ed). Advances in the psychology of human intelligence. Vol. 1 (1982), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 17-76
18. Cross P. Not can but will college teaching be improved?. New Directions for Higher Education 17 (1977) 1-15
19. Dunning D. On the motives underlying social cognition. Blackwell handbook of social psychology. In: Schwarz N., and Tesser A. (Eds). Intraindividual processes Vol. 1 (2001), Blackwell, New York 348-374
20. Dunning D. Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself (2005), Psychology Press, New York
21. Dunning D., Heath D., and Suls J.M. Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (2004) 69-106
22. Dunning D., Johnson K., Ehrlinger J., and Kruger J. Why people fail to recognize their own competence. Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (2003) 83-87
23. Dunning D., Meyerowitz J.A., and Holzberg A.D. Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57 (1989) 1082-1090
24. Dweck C.S. Self theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development (1999), Psychology Press/Taylor and Francis, Philadelphia, PA
25. Dweck C.S., and Leggett E.L. A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review 95 (1988) 256-273
26. Edwards R.K., Kellner K.R., Sistron C.L., and Magyari E.J. Medical student self-assessment of performance on an obstetrics and gynecology clerkship. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 188 (2003) 1078-1082
27. Ehrlinger J., and Dunning D. How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84 (2003) 5-17
28. Ehrlinger, J., & Dweck, C. S. (in preparation). If I don't see it, it must not exist: How preferential attention allocation contributes to overconfidence. Florida State University.
29. Falchikov J.N., and Boud D. Student self-assessment in higher education: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research 59 (1989) 395-430
30. Freund B., Colgrove L.A., Burke B.L., and McLeod R. Self-rated driving performance among elderly drivers referred for driving evaluation. Accident: Analysis and Prevention 37 (2005) 613-618
31. Glucksberg S. The influence of strength and drive on functional fixedness and perceptual recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology 63 (1962) 36-41
32. Grether D.M. Bayes rule as a descriptive model: The representativeness heuristic. Quarterly Journal of Economics 95 (1980) 537-557
33. Hacker D.J., Bol L., Horgan D.D., and Rakow E.A. Test prediction and performance in a classroom context. Journal of Educational Psychology 92 (2000) 160-170
34. Harris M.M., and Schaubroeck J. A meta-analysis of self-supervisor, self-peer, and peer-supervisor ratings. Personnel Psychology 41 (1988) 43-62
35. Haun D.E., Zeringue A., Leach A., and Foley A. Assessing the competence of specimen-processing personnel. Laboratory Medicine 31 (2000) 633-637
36. Hodges B., Regehr G., and Martin D. Difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence: Novice physicians who are unskilled and unaware of it. Academic Medicine 76 (2001) S87-S89
37. Hogarth R.M., Gibbs B.J., McKenzie C.R.M., and Marquis M.A. Learning from feedback: Exactingness & incentives. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 17 (1991) 734-752
38. Hong Y., Chiu C., Lin D.M.-S., Wan W., and Dweck C.S. Implicit theories, attributions, and coping: A meaning system approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999) 588-599
39. Jenkins Jr. G.D., Mitra A., Gupta N., and Shaw J.D. Are financial incentives related to the performance? A meta-analytic review of empirical research. Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (1998) 777-787
40. Kahneman D., and Peavler W.S. Incentive effects and papillary changes in association learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology 79 (1969) 312-318
41. Keren G.B. Facing uncertainty in the game of bridge: A calibration study. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 139 (1987) 98-114
42. Krueger J. Enhancement bias in descriptions of self and others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24 (1998) 505-516
43. Kruger J. Lake Wobegon be gone! The ''below average effect" and the egocentric nature of comparative ability judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999) 221-232
44. Krueger J.I., and Funder D.C. Toward a balanced social psychology: Causses, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (2004) 313-327
45. Krueger J., and Mueller R.A. Unskilled, unaware, or both? The contribution of social-perceptual skills and statistical regression to self-enhancement biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82 (2002) 180-188
46. Kruger J., and Dunning D. Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (1999) 1121-1134
47. Kruger J., and Dunning D. Unskilled and unaware-but why? A reply to Krueger and Mueller. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82 (2002) 189-192
48. Kunda Z. The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 108 (1990) 480-498
49. Lerner J.S., and Tetlock P.E. Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999) 255-275
50. Libby R., and Lipe M.G. Incentives, effort and the cognitive processes involved in accounting-related judgments. Journal of Accounting Research 30 (1992) 249-273
51. Lichtenstein S., Fischhoff B., and Phillips L. Calibration of probabilities: The state of the art to 1980. In: Kahneman D., Slovic P., and Tversky A. (Eds). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (1982), Cambridge University Press, New York
52. Mabe III P.A., and West S.G. Validity of self-evaluation of ability: A review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology 67 (1982) 280-296
53. Maki R.H., Jonas D., and Kallod M. The relationship between comprehension and metacomprehension ability. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 1 (1994) 126-129
54. Marottoli R.A., and Richardson E.D. Confidence in, and self-rating of, driving ability among older drivers. Accident Analysis and Prevention 30 (1998) 331-336
55. Mintz A., Redd S.B., and Vedlitz A. Can we generalize from student experiments to the real world in political science, military affairs, and international relations?. Journal of Conflict Resolution 50 (2006) 757-776
56. Morgan S.L. Counterfactuals, causal effect heterogeneity, and the Catholic school effect on learning. Sociology of Education 74 (2001) 341-374
57. Orton P.Z. Cliffs Law School admission test preparation guide (1993), Cliffs Notes Incorporated, Lincoln, NE
58. Salthouse T.A., Rogan J.D., and Prill K.A. Division of attention: Age differences on a visually presented memory task. Memory and cognition 12 (1984) 613-620
59. Sears D.O. College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on social psychology's view of human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986) 515-530
60. Sedikides C., Berbst K.C., Hardin D.P., and Dardis G.J. Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: The search for mechanisms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002) 592-605
61. Shaughnessy J.J. Confidence judgment accuracy as a predictor of test performance. Journal of Research in Personality 13 (1979) 505-514
62. Sinkavich F.J. Performance and metamemory: Do students know what they don't know?. Instructional Psychology 22 (1995) 77-87
63. Tetlock P.E. Accountability and complexity of thought. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 45 (1983) 74-83
64. Tetlock P.E., and Kim J.I. Accountability and judgment processes in a personality prediction task. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 52 (1987) 700-709
65. Weinstein N.D. Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58 (1980) 806-820
66. Winship C., and Korenman S. Does staying in school make you smarter? The effect of education on IQ. In: Devlin B., Fienberg S.E., Resnick D., and Roeder K. (Eds). Intelligence and success: Is it all in the genes? Scientists respond to the bell curve (1997), Springer Verlag, New York 215-234
67. Winship C., and Morgan S.L. The estimation of causal effects from observational data. Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999) 659-707
68. Wright W.F., and Anderson U. Effects of situation familiarity and financial incentives on use of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic for probability assessment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 44 (1989) 68-82
69. Zenger T.R. Why do employers only reward extreme performance? Examining the relationships among performance, pay, and turnover. Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (1992) 198-219