April 18, 2003

Unskilled and unaware of it
Posted by jbutler@bostonworks.com">Jason Butler at 6:56 AM -

One of the all-time greatest articles from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Mmmmm, metacognitive ability....

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