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Fig. 6.16 Perceived
percentile rankings for
mastery of course material
and test performance as a
function of actual
performance rank. Copied
from Dunning et al. (
2003
)
with permission
invulnerability, that plans cannot go badly wrong given the support you have.
These biases in reasoning, however, are well known and occur in nearly everyone.
They offer one set of reasons to explain why people are foolish at times.
When they study, students can be affected by these factors, and thus users who
study manuals or are learning how to use software or systems would be equally
vulnerable. Typically, students think they have learned more than they have
through studying (Dunning et al.
2003
; Winne and Jamieson-Noel
2002
). This
miscalibration can be based on judgments of the wrong measures. For example,
some students measure the ease of reading the material. The real test is different,
however. The real test is not how fast you can read the material, but how well can
you recall it and apply it. Thus, students who stop studying when they can repeat
the material or who write about the material will be better calibrated than students
who make this judgment on factors not related to the test.
Figure
6.16
shows example results. Subjects who just took a sophomore psy-
chology exam were asked how well they thought they had done. The subjects were
grouped by quartiles by their exam score. The subjects who performed worst
thought their scores were just above average (far left). The third quartile was
relatively well calibrated in that their predictions matched their performance. The
top quartile thought their performance would be a bit lower, showing modesty
among the top performers.
Another problem is that the poor performers simply do not know any better.
They lack the knowledge to judge that their performance is inadequate. Dunning
et al. (
2003
) call it a double curse:
The skills needed to produce correct responses are virtually identical to those needed to
evaluate the accuracy of one's responses. The skills needed to produce logically sound
arguments, for instance, are the same skills that are necessary to recognize when a logi-
cally sound argument has been made. Thus, if people lack the skills to produce correct
answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers, or anyone
else's, are right or wrong. They cannot recognize their responses as mistaken, or other
people's responses as superior to their own. In short, incompetence means that people
cannot successfully complete the task of metacognition, which, among its many meanings,
refers to the ability to evaluate responses as correct or incorrect.
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