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Do You Know How to Tell If the US Suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?
The cliche says that a little knowledge can be dangerous. While a cliche is an overused saying, the reason it’s overused could be due to its veracity.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: What Is It Anyway?
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency of individuals with low ability or expertise in a particular area to overestimate their competence and skills while simultaneously failing to recognize their own limitations or deficiencies. David Dunning and Justin Kruger, psychologists, were the first to describe this effect in 1999.
According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people who are incompetent or inexperienced in a certain domain often lack the metacognitive abilities necessary to accurately assess their own performance. As a result, they may mistakenly believe they are more knowledgeable or skilled than they actually are. This overestimation can occur because they lack the expertise to recognize their own mistakes or gaps in knowledge.
Conversely, individuals who are highly skilled or knowledgeable in a particular area tend to underestimate their abilities. This occurs because they assume…
