Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence Article Analysis Essay

In the article “Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence,” the authors came up with different ideas on how certain students perform on test. For example, they asked one hundred forty-one students to tell them how they did right after they finished taking an exam and them to estimate their performance and their mastery of the course material in comparison to other students who was taking the exam. The theory to justify their idea was to present the data from the questions to the chart of percentile to actual performance quartile. They separated them into four groups that showed students who were in the quartile and overestimated how they would do on the exam as that put them in the 12th percentile as it supported their hypothesis. Their main hypothesis findings are that if “people lack the skills to produce correct answers, they are also cursed with an inability to know when their answers or anyone else is right or wrong” (Dunning, et al. 85). Statistically what they found were if poor performers are given the skills to figure out correct answers to incorrect answers, then they would be able to figure out their own incompetence. As two top performers that compare their skill set level to others but can still end up doing poorly then poor performance students. Many students develop their own way of studying whether you are a top performer or a poor performer that can build a strategy in order to perform well on an exam. For example, top performers can study all the time and still score low on an exam compared to a poor performer who doesn’t take notes or study and can remember things based on what they were taught in class to be able to pass an exam. 

In class we spoke about how social psychology is a science. This article relates to the methods and ethics lecture about how social psychologists conduct their research when wanting to figure out an analysis using an experimental method just like the authors did to figure out how students felt they performed compared to how they actually performed on the exam. The article mentioned all of the parts of the research design. I was able to see how scientists took a concept that is abstract and made it measurable. I was also able to think about the role that ethics plays when conducting any experiment and the basic ethical responsibilities that the authors of this experiment had to have. Lastly, when thinking about validity and what we spoke about in class I was left pondering how the authors accounted for this in their experiment. 

I liked the way the authors tracked the data using charts about how students felt before the exam as some individuals go above and beyond to do well in their exams and then there's other students who overestimate their skill sets and their overall performance. The authors viewpoint that “if poor performers had the skills needed to distinguish accuracy from error, they would then have the skills needed to avoid poor performance” makes sense (Dunning, et al. 85). If someone has the capacity to to do well, they would. Simple as that because they have the skill sets to succeed. I, just the authors, am one of those who thinks that people have competencies and incompetencies.  While the article aims at proving that people base their perceptions of their performance on their skill sets, questioning people's ability to have accurate views of their skill sets doesn't necessarily prove what the authors are aiming to prove because several factors need to be taken into consideration and they are solely relying on how people think they are going to perform. The experiment fails to consider peoples state beyond what the authors were interested and gathering more data on other factors that could hinder the way that a participant performed. If my critique was addressed, they would have accounted for validity in their experiment in their experiment design. If I were to conduct a follow-up study, I would also focus on other factors that could also play a role in the data that I collect such as getting more information about the participants health/interests and other factors that might affect the way that people perform in an experiment in order to account for validity.