Friday, April 25, 2003

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On Competence From a study on self-evaluation of personal competence: As it turns out, however, our data point to a more psychological explanation. Specifically, top-quartile participants appear to have fallen prey to a false-consensus effect ( Ross et al., 1977 ). Simply put, these participants assumed that because they performed so well, their peers must have performed well likewise. This would have led top-quartile participants to underestimate their comparative abilities (i.e., how their general ability and test performance compare with that of their peers), but not their absolute abilities (i.e., their raw score on the test). This was precisely the pattern of data we observed: Compared with participants falling in the third quartile, participants in the top quartile were an average of 23% less calibrated in terms of their comparative performance on the test–but 16% more calibrated in terms of their objective performance on the test. 7 More conclusive evidence came from Phase 2 of Study 3. Once top-quartile participants learned how poorly their peers had performed, they raised their self-appraisals to more accurate levels. We have argued that unskilled individuals suffer a dual burden: Not only do they perform poorly, but they fail to realize it. It thus appears that extremely competent individuals suffer a burden as well. Although they perform competently, they fail to realize that their proficiency is not necessarily shared by their peers. 9:13:54 PM    comment []