A rational model of the Dunning-Kruger effect supports insensitivity to evidence in low performers
Jansen, Rafferty and Griffiths build a rational model of self-assessment to ask what could produce the Dunning-Kruger pattern. They show that the effect could arise from two psychological mechanisms, alone or together: the influence of prior beliefs about ability, or a relation between performance and skill at determining whether each answer is correct. To tell these apart they ran large-scale replications of a seminal paper, with about 4,000 participants in each of two studies. Comparing two variants of the model, they report support for low performers being less able to estimate whether they are correct, in the domains of grammar and logical reasoning.
Jansen, Rafferty and Griffiths build a rational model of self-assessment to ask what could produce the Dunning-Kruger pattern. They show that the effect could arise from two psychological mechanisms, alone or together: the influence of prior beliefs about ability, or a relation between performance and skill at determining whether each answer is correct. To tell these apart they ran large-scale replications of a seminal paper, with about 4,000 participants in each of two studies. Comparing two variants of the model, they report support for low performers being less able to estimate whether they are correct, in the domains of grammar and logical reasoning.
Written from the abstract, Europe PMC record (PubMed 33633375), read 2026-10-25.
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Jansen, R. A., Rafferty, A. N., & Griffiths, T. L. (2021). A rational model of the Dunning-Kruger effect supports insensitivity to evidence in low performers. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(6), 756-763. doi:10.1038/s41562-021-01057-0