Dunning-Kruger Effect (“Reverse Imposter Syndrome”)

The less you know, the more confident you are. The more you know, the less confidence you are.

I have this. I have a tendency to think I am better than most people, but really I don’t know sh-t.

I don’t know what I don’t know. This is a blind splot. See Johari Window

Why do I have this

The initial and most common account is based on meta-cognitive abilities. It rests on the assumption that part of acquiring a skill consists in learning to distinguish between good and bad performances of this skill. Since people with low skill have not yet acquired this discriminatory ability, they are unable to properly assess their performance.

With most things I learn, I only learn it at a surface level. Thus, this leads me to believe that I am better than I actually am because I do not see the qualitative difference between my performances and performances by others. So I lack the meta-cognitive ability to recognize my incompetence. This account has also been called the “dual-burden account” or the “double-burden of incompetence”, since the burden of regular incompetence is paired with the burden of meta-cognitive incompetence.