Unskilled and Unaware of It – Justin Kruger and David Dunning

McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight. He was arrested less than an hour later after videotapes of him were broadcast on the 11 o’clock news. When police showed him the tapes, he said, “But I wore the juice”. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing lemon juice on one’s face made it invisible to cameras.

they apply in these domains with varying levels of success. We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt, they suffer a dual burden. Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine.

Incompetent individuals lack what cognitive psychologists call meta cognition. These terms refer to the ability to know how well one is performing and when one is likely to be accurate in judgment. For example, consider the ability to write grammatical English. To lack the former is to be deficient in the latter.

Auto163

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.2655&rep=rep1&type=pdf