A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives
people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it
bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people
don't have a good enough sense of humor to tell.
The results are uniform across all the knowledge domains: People who
actually did well on the test tend to feel more confident about their
performance than people who didn't do well, but only slightly. Almost
everyone thinks they did better than average. "For people at the bottom
who are really doing badly - those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile
- they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above
average," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries. The same pattern emerges
in tests of people's ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the
correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of
chess.
"People at the bottom still think they're outperforming other
people."
It's not merely optimism, but rather that their total lack of expertise
renders them unable to recognize their deficiency. Even when Dunning and
his colleagues offer study participants a $100 reward if they can rate
themselves accurately, they cannot. "They're really trying to be honest
and impartial," he said... They're delusional.
Along the same lines, people who aren't talented in a given area tend
not to be able to recognize the talents or good ideas of others, from
co-workers to politicians. This may impede the democratic process, which
relies on citizens having the capacity to identify and support the best
candidate or policy.
The ultimate takeaway of the research is the reminder that you really
may not be as great as you think you are. And you might not be right
about the things you believe you're right about. And if you try to joke
about all this, you might not come off as funny as you think.
http://news.yahoo.com/incompetent-people-too-ignorant-know-175402902.htm
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