> The author of this piece both suggests that a key variable is fixed and later admits it varies within the same dataset.
I don't see how that variable changes, here is an example how the error variable can be exactly the same for everyone and reproduce the results:
Lets say the overconfidence is always that you feel 50% of those better than you are actually worse than you. So everyone is equally overconfident, just that the top wont move their own placings as much as the bottom since there are much fewer people that they can mistake being worse than them. Then apply noise to this and you get the graph Dunning-Kruger got.
You could say "But they are better at estimating their rank!", but that is just a mathematical artefact, it isn't a psychological result. Even if everyone always guessed that they are number 1, the better you are the better your guess will be, but in that case it is easy to see that everyone overestimates their skill in the same way instead of the better people having a fundamentally different way of evaluating themselves.
Both analyses seem to agree on one finding: people’s skill at estimating their own ability increases with that skill. It can’t be a purely mathematical artifact because you would see a tapering at either end, or a narrowing distribution of errors at the bottom end, not just a narrowing toward the top end.
This should be unsurprising for anyone who has become sufficiently skilled at something. Beginners can’t even discern the differences the experts are discussing, and frequently make errors in classes they don’t even understand.
Beginners, by definition, are guessing 100%. Some will guess high, others low, and the rest in between. But they are all guessing. Perhaps There's a cultural bias to over-estimate their skill? Perhaps there's a nudge in the process of the study that led them to overestimate?
The lede isn't that people over-estimate their skill level. The lede is, why would that be as they have nothing else to go on. That is the trigger or triggers? And to say, the more experienced estimate better? Well, duh.
> Lets say the overconfidence is always that you feel 50% of those better than you are actually worse than you. So everyone is equally overconfident, just that the top wont move their own placings as much as the bottom since there are much fewer people that they can mistake being worse than them. Then apply noise to this and you get the graph Dunning-Kruger got.
But the data of original D-K paper shows that the top 25% people underestimate their placings. So this whole paragraph, while logically true, has little to do with the original D-K effect.
> You could say "But they are better at estimating their rank!", but that is just a mathematical artefact, it isn't a psychological result. Even if everyone always guessed that they are number 1...
If everyone always guessed that they are number 1, it's a huge psychological result: it means people are extremely irrational when it comes to self-evaluation.
> But the data of original D-K paper shows that the top 25% people underestimate their placings. So this whole paragraph, while logically true, has little to do with the original D-K effect.
That is what you would expect under my model, due to the randomness being limited upwards for the high placings but still go downwards. That is the effect the article we are talking about refers to when they say "Autocorrelation".
I don't see how that variable changes, here is an example how the error variable can be exactly the same for everyone and reproduce the results:
Lets say the overconfidence is always that you feel 50% of those better than you are actually worse than you. So everyone is equally overconfident, just that the top wont move their own placings as much as the bottom since there are much fewer people that they can mistake being worse than them. Then apply noise to this and you get the graph Dunning-Kruger got.
You could say "But they are better at estimating their rank!", but that is just a mathematical artefact, it isn't a psychological result. Even if everyone always guessed that they are number 1, the better you are the better your guess will be, but in that case it is easy to see that everyone overestimates their skill in the same way instead of the better people having a fundamentally different way of evaluating themselves.