This Paper Explains A Lot

By Daniel Miessler on October 15th, 2005: Tagged as Culture | Sociology

A fellow blogger by the name of Kasia pointed out an interesting paper called Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. I thought this was particularly good:

“It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.”

Do you work with someone like this? Most of us do, and it’s nice to know there’s a paper about it.

Comments

Carl M

Now ... pair this with the Peter Principle (which essentially asserts that people will be promoted ONE too many times ... thus are more or less incomptent in their ultimate positions). This study would indicate that at least SOME of those people will be clueless that the Peter Principle applies to them.