Is an Unskilled Really Unaware of it?

Abstract

Two psychologists, Justin KRUGER from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and David DUNNING from Cornell University, published their study named “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” in 1999 (Kruger & Dunning). The summary of their work concludes that “…incompetent individuals have more difficulty recognizing their true level of ability than do more competent individuals and that a lack of metacognitive skills may underlie this deficiency” (Kruger & Dunning, 1999.pg. 31). Many studies which have followed Kruger and Dunning, including their own follow-up studies, have looked at students'self-assessment toward their own tests or learning abilities. A few studies have adopted this study to different fields such as consumer product choice (Burson, 2004) and economic agents and decision errors (Ferraro, 2010). Although the educational perspective was exploredin the original study, the leadership in an educational setting was not investigated. The current study focuses on a review of relevant literature regarding Kruger and Dunning's work, in addition to applying their theory via a case study of a specific leadership position in an institution of higher education.