Comment on Gignac and Zajenkowski, The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data
Hiller comments on Gignac and Zajenkowski's argument that the Dunning-Kruger effect is mostly a statistical artefact. He contends that their finding of equal prediction error across levels of intelligence does not show the effect is merely statistical, and that this result probably comes from their decision to convert a comparative self-rating of intelligence onto a linear scale when a normal scale would have fitted better. He also cautions researchers studying self-assessed intelligence to watch for measurement problems when ordinal ratings are treated as interval data.
Hiller comments on Gignac and Zajenkowski's argument that the Dunning-Kruger effect is mostly a statistical artefact. He contends that their finding of equal prediction error across levels of intelligence does not show the effect is merely statistical, and that this result probably comes from their decision to convert a comparative self-rating of intelligence onto a linear scale when a normal scale would have fitted better. He also cautions researchers studying self-assessed intelligence to watch for measurement problems when ordinal ratings are treated as interval data.
Written from the abstract summary, PhilArchive record, read 2026-10-25.
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Hiller, A. (2023). Comment on Gignac and Zajenkowski, The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact: Valid approaches to testing the hypothesis with individual differences data. Intelligence, 97, 101732. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2023.101732