Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments

In the citing paper

“This pattern is consistent with the metacognitive model formulated by Kruger and Dunning (76), who demonstrated that individuals with limited competence in a given domain tend to lack awareness of that very limitation, resulting in systematic self-assessment inflation.”

In the citing paper

“which is inconsistent with previous studies that have identified low- performing students as demonstrating the most significant metacognitive disconnect due to the Dunning- Kruger effect (Kruger & Dunning,1999; Ehrlinger et al.,2008; Sawdon & Finn,2014; Steuber et al.,2017).”

In the citing paper

“The decline in performance of human-AI teams when tackling tasks of medium complexity suggests that users may have faced challenges in accurately assessing their own abilities and the capabilities of AI systems, primarily by overestimating their own abilities [64].”

In the citing paper

“By contrast, this literature suggests that individuals who do not know much about a subject tend not to recognize their ignorance and therefore typically fail to seek better information (Kruger and Dunning 1999).”

In the citing paper

“Media literacy has long focused on personal responsibility, which can not only imbue individuals with a false sense of confidence in their skills (Sanchez & Dunning, 2018; Kruger & Dunning, 1999), but put the onus of monitoring media effects on the audience, rather than media creators, social media platforms, or regulators.”

In the citing paper

“This was likely observed in the small proportions of participants whose scores did not change or decreased from pre- to post-test.”

In the citing paper

“Kruger and Dunning (1999) report a series of experiments in which the worst-performing subjects on a variety of tests showed a bigger discrepancy between actual performance and a one-shot rating than the better performers.”

In the citing paper

“This double curse means that those people who lack the skills to produce the right answers likewise lack the ability to judge whether their own answers (and those of other people) are in fact right.”

In the citing paper

“Yet concerns have been raised as to the validity and reliability of self-assessments as true indicators of student ability and progress (Dunn & Mulvenon, 2009;Kruger & Dunning, 1999;Ross, 2006)”

In the citing paper

“in other words, students may not know enough to be able to gauge their own ignorance or incompetence, and consequently these may be insufficient as self-monitoring tools.”

In the citing paper

“They found that building monitoring skills improved self-evaluations and achievement among struggling students.”

In the citing paper

“Kruger and Dunning (1999) extended these findings, showing that poor performers are typically least accurate in appraising their abilities.”

In the citing paper

“performance gains often occur without altering individuals’ self-perceptions, the two becoming aligned because performance increases to meet perceptions.”

In the citing paper

“Studies of university students also indicate a paradoxical pattern in which generative-AI use can increase perceived efficiency or self-efficacy while simultaneously strengthening technological dependence or false self-efficacy (Zhang and Xu, 2025; Jia et al., 2025; Kruger and Dunning, 1999).”