Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments
Kruger and Dunning propose that people who are unskilled in a domain overestimate their ability because the same shortfall that produces poor performance also prevents them from recognising it. Across four studies of undergraduates, those who scored in the bottom quarter on tests of humour, grammar and logic grossly overestimated their performance. Their metacognitive skill, the ability to tell accurate judgements from errors, was weaker, and the fourth study found that a short training in logical reasoning improved both their skill and the accuracy of their self-assessments. The paper is the origin of the effect that bears the authors' names.
Kruger and Dunning propose that people who are unskilled in a domain overestimate their ability because the same shortfall that produces poor performance also prevents them from recognising it. Across four studies of undergraduates, those who scored in the bottom quarter on tests of humour, grammar and logic grossly overestimated their performance. Their metacognitive skill, the ability to tell accurate judgements from errors, was weaker, and the fourth study found that a short training in logical reasoning improved both their skill and the accuracy of their self-assessments. The paper is the origin of the effect that bears the authors' names.
Written from the abstract (bottom quarter, 12th and 62nd percentile figures re-read 2026-10-31) and text of an openly hosted copy of the paper.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121