Dunning-Kruger Effect

CORE DEFINITION

The Dunning-Kruger effect, also known as the DK effect or the 'frog at the bottom of a well' phenomenon, is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the metacognitive deficiency of such people, who fail to recognize their own incompetence and cannot accurately assess their own abilities. The effect was first observed in experiments by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University in 1999. Their research also showed that, conversely, highly competent individuals tend to underestimate their own abilities, mistakenly assuming that tasks that are easy for them are also easy for others. However, the self-assessments of less competent individuals are not higher than those of more competent ones. Through studies on skills such as reading, driving, playing chess, and tennis, they found that: (1) people who are unskilled at a specific task tend to overestimate their skill level, but their self-assessment is still lower than that of highly skilled individuals; (2) unskilled individuals fail to correctly recognize the level of others who truly possess the skill.