The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Not knowing your limits

The hypothesized phenomenon known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, was tested in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, both then of Cornell University. 

Justin Kruger and David Dunning noted earlier studies suggesting that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence.

This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis.

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

Dunning has since drawn an analogy ("the anosognosia of everyday life") to a condition in which a person who suffers a physical disability because of brain injury seems unaware of or denies the existence of the disability, even for dramatic impairments such as blindness or paralysis.

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