Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance.

Abstract

People who score low on a performance test overestimate their own performance relative to others, whereas high scorers slightly underestimate their own performance. J. Kruger and D. Dunning (1999) attributed these asymmetric errors to differences in metacognitive skill. A replication study showed no evidence for mediation effects for any of several candidate variables. Asymmetric errors were expected because of statistical regression and the general better-than-average (BTA) heuristic. Consistent with this parsimonious model, errors were no longer asymmetric when either regression or the BTA effect was statistically removed. In fact, high rather than low performers were more error prone in that they were more likely to neglect their own estimates of the performance of others when predicting how they themselves performed relative to the group.

Skilled or unskilled, but still unaware of it: How perceptions of difficulty drive miscalibration in relative comparisons.

“…If so, we might not have provided the high performers with adequate opportunities to demonstrate their superior metacognitive abilities. Kruger and Dunning (2002) make a similar point in their critique of Krueger and Mueller's (2002) studies, although they focus on task reliability rather than predictability per se. (We will elaborate on the difference between reliability and predictability in the General Discussion.…”

“…Some secondary analyses of our data do provide some evidence that task skill is correlated with calibration, and Kruger and Dunning (1999, Study 4) present a regression analysis showing that deficits in metacognitive skill predict absolute miscalibration for participants in the bottom Skilled or Unskilled 30 quartile. However, evidence for the mediating role of metacognition remains controversial (Kruger & Dunning, 2002;Krueger & Mueller, 2002), and it remains unclear how important this may be in explaining inaccuracies in relative judgment. Evidence from three new studies indicate that the answer to "Who makes errors?"…”

“…We examine a range of judgment contexts that vary in perceived difficulty, including several for which there is no overall bias or a negative bias. This permits us to test a generalization of Krueger and Mueller's (2002) basic hypothesis. That is, people at all performance levels are equally poor at estimating their relative performance, and equally prone to underestimate their relative standing on tasks that are perceived to be hard and overestimate it on tasks that are perceived to be easy.…”

“…People's ability to estimate their relative performance is largely determined by the kind of feedback they receive, and how they use it. Relevant feedback may be accumulated over a long time to produce a general sense of one's own ability in a domain compared to others.Other feedback is more immediate, indicating how well a particular performance is going.Relative performance judgments will be affected by feedback about one's own performance, as well as feedback about the average performance of others and about the dispersion of performances.Most of the tasks used by Kruger and Dunning (1999), Krueger and Mueller (2002), and us provided participants with little specific information about how they were doing in an absolute sense, or about how their peers performed. For example, participants were not told whether their quiz answers were correct or not, and were not told what the average score was.…”

When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence

“…Overconfidence is measured by comparing individuals' self-perceptions of ability to objective, operational criteria such as actual task performance and test scores (e.g., Krueger & Mueller, 2002;Kruger & Dunning, 1999;Larrick, Burson, & Soll, 2007). Individuals are overconfident when they believe they are better than objective measures indicate.…”