whiteandnerdy

I recently found out about a psychological curiosity called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The gist of it is that people who are incompetent tend to overestimate their abilities more than people who actually are knowledgeable. Moreover, incompetent people also tend to not recognize the genuine skills of others. This was shown in a study performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning at Cornell University. The subjects were tested in logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. I'm not entirely sure how they tested humor. I should do more research to try and find out. In any case, the flip side of the coin is that people who are actually competent tended to underestimate their abilities. This certainly makes me feel better abut my own severe lack of self-confidence. I apologize for getting political, but I believe President Bush is the absolute epitome of this problem. They could do an entire series of studies to try and discover just how incompetent you must be to possess such a bloated and baseless sense of self-confidence. In case you're curious to know a little more, or are simply looking for a better explanation, I'll post the link to the Wikipedia article. It's rather short, but it covers the main points. It also contains one of my favorite Charles Darwin quotes.

Dunning-Kruger Effect