Dunning–Kruger effect

Also known as D-K effect

cognitive bias in which incompetent people tend to assess themselves as skilled

AI overview

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people who lack skill or knowledge in a particular area tend to overestimate their own competence in that area. It matters because understanding this bias can help us recognize when we might be overconfident about our abilities and encourage us to seek feedback and continue learning.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

In the Vinony graph

Vinony's link graph records 238 inbound references to Dunning–Kruger effect, and connects out to psychology of religion, overconfidence effect and superiority bias.

It sits within the topics Cognitive biases, Cognitive inertia and Incompetence.

Vinony links it to 69 Wikipedia language editions.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: cognitive bias
Named after: Justin Kruger
Image: Mr Pipo Dunning kruger.svg

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Commons category: Dunning–Kruger effect
inception: 1999-00-00

Sources (4)

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Encyclopedic overview

Relation between average self-perceived performance and average actual performance on a college exam. The red area shows the tendency of low performers to overestimate their abilities. Nevertheless, low performers' self-assessment is lower than that of high performers.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that describes the systematic tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. The term may also refer to the tendency of high performers to underestimate their skills. It was first identified by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is sometimes misunderstood as claiming that people with low intelligence are generally overconfident, instead of denoting specific overconfidence of people unskilled at particular areas.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Dunning–Kruger effect” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.