the dunning-kruger effect

I just came across the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, which looks like a rather psychological thing. Since I never heard of that name before (although I’m familiar with some of the studies), I asked a couple of psychologists I’m having breakfast with currently, none of them knew the effect either.

Have you heard of it before?

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. [...] “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

(Quotes from Kruger & Dunning, 1999, Source: Wikipedia)

Bertrand Russell had a funny way to put it:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.