The Dunning-Kruger Effect posits that we over estimate our abilities and what we think we know. It’s a nice idea that would explain much – except it may not really exist. The finding appears to have been caused by a statistical fluke: The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation – Economics from the Top Down
Unskilled and unaware of it
Mistakes happen. So in that sense, we should not fault Dunning and Kruger for having erred. However, there is a delightful irony to the circumstances of their blunder. Here are two Ivy League professors7 arguing that unskilled people have a ‘dual burden’: not only are unskilled people ‘incompetent’ … they are unaware of their own incompetence.
The irony is that the situation is actually reversed. In their seminal paper, Dunning and Kruger are the ones broadcasting their (statistical) incompetence by conflating autocorrelation for a psychological effect. In this light, the paper’s title may still be appropriate. It’s just that it was the authors (not the test subjects) who were ‘unskilled and unaware of it’.
