How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance.

Abstract

An important source of people's perceptions of their performance, and potential errors in those perceptions, are chronic views people hold regarding their abilities. In support of this observation, manipulating people's general views of their ability, or altering which view seemed most relevant to a task, changed performance estimates independently of any impact on actual performance. A final study extended this analysis to why women disproportionately avoid careers in science. Women performed equally to men on a science quiz, yet underestimated their performance because they thought less of their general scientific reasoning ability than did men. They, consequently, were more likely to refuse to enter a science competition.

Changing Expectations, Same Perspective: Pre-service Teachers’ Judgments of Professional Efficacy

“…Further, Ehrlinger and Dunning (2003) attribute inconsistencies between Selfperception and actual performance as a symptom of what they call the top-down nature of performance estimates. This is a process whereby a person who begins with an inflated sense of Self-capability uses those levels of Self-beliefs when making projected evaluations of their future performance, since performance evaluations are 'formed by referring to a person's chronic view about his or her abilities in the specific domain in question ' (p. 378).…”

Adult Metacomprehension: Judgment Processes and Accuracy Constraints

“…It should be studied whether performance postdictions, performance judgments after the tests, also involve anchoring and adjustment processes. Research has shown that performance postdictions are influenced by selfperceptions of ability as well (e.g., Dunning et al 2003;Ehrlinger and Dunning 2003;Schraw and Roedel 1994). Specifically, Ehrlinger and Dunning (2003: Study 1) showed that participants' self-perceptions of logical reasoning ability were significantly and positively correlated with their postdictions on a logical reasoning task after controlling for actual performance.…”

“…Specifically, Ehrlinger and Dunning (2003: Study 1) showed that participants' self-perceptions of logical reasoning ability were significantly and positively correlated with their postdictions on a logical reasoning task after controlling for actual performance. In Study 3, Ehrlinger and Dunning (2003) manipulated participants' self-perceptions of knowledge of geography using techniques such as asking questions that gave participants favorable or unfavorable impressions of their own geographical knowledge. The manipulation of self-perceptions influenced postdictions, independent of actual performance.…”

Accuracy of confidence judgments: Stability and generality in the learning process and predictive validity for learning outcome

“…basis of their theories or beliefs-for example, beliefs about self-efficacy or about their own ability (Ehrlinger & Dunning, 2003) or expertise . Self-efficacy is at least moderately stable over a period of 1 week (Lane & Lane, 2001), and the ability of reading comprehension is at least moderately stable over 5 months, as well (Byrne, 1986).…”