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

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where individuals with low competence in a specific area overestimate their abilities. This occurs because the metacognitive skills needed to recognize one's own incompetence are lacking. Essentially, people who don't know much about a subject often don't realize how little they know, leading them to believe they are more knowledgeable than they actually are.12

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger first described this phenomenon in their 1999 paper, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." Their research indicated that incompetent individuals not only overestimate their performance but also struggle to recognize competence in others and have difficulty assessing their own true skill level. Conversely, highly competent individuals may underestimate their abilities relative to others.12