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Michigan Publishing

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, January 1999
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#4 of 7,436)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Citations

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4694 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
3432 Mendeley
citeulike
44 CiteULike
connotea
3 Connotea
Title
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Published in
Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, January 1999
DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121
Pubmed ID
Authors

Justin Kruger, David Dunning

Abstract

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 1,406 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 3,432 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 46 1%
Germany 18 <1%
United Kingdom 18 <1%
Netherlands 7 <1%
Canada 7 <1%
Australia 7 <1%
Sweden 6 <1%
Brazil 6 <1%
Spain 5 <1%
Other 42 1%
Unknown 3270 95%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 584 17%
Student > Master 465 14%
Researcher 409 12%
Student > Bachelor 288 8%
Student > Doctoral Student 192 6%
Other 851 25%
Unknown 643 19%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 558 16%
Social Sciences 350 10%
Medicine and Dentistry 300 9%
Business, Management and Accounting 254 7%
Computer Science 171 5%
Other 1025 30%
Unknown 774 23%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1775. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 March 2024.
All research outputs
#5,790
of 25,559,053 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#4
of 7,436 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2
of 110,019 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Personality & Social Psychology
#1
of 140 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,559,053 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,436 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 29.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 110,019 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 140 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.