Do We Know When We Don’t Know?

Most people are aware on what they are learning to improve their skills into additional skills. They go on working on different perspectives to learn; they may seek help, hunt for the required information, ask different questions and look for better ways to learn. So all these are super cool when they are following, but wait. Here is the thing that do most people know what they exactly need when they are in the need of additional knowledge or skills? Let’s go on one research and see what does this research tell us?

According to research conducted by Kruger and Dunning on the nature of proficiency at social and intellectual tasks that people who are less proficient tend to have serious problems recognizing that they are not proficient at these tasks. This test claimed that people with lower skills in these tasks are tend to hold higher views on their abilities when compare with the people who are having higher skills in these tasks are tend to hold lower views on their abilities.

For example, in one of the four tests of their research, participants were given 20 items from the Law School Admission Test on logical reasoning. After they completed the test, they were asked to estimate their score. Participants who did the worst scored at the 12th percentile (meaning 88 percent did better than they did), but they estimated that performance at the 68th percentile. Participants who scored in the 86th percentile estimated themselves at the 68th percentile. They found this same result in all of the tests.

So can people correctly evaluate whether they need additional knowledge and skills to perform their job? The answer is, “people who are most proficient are more able to correctly evaluate their performance and the need for additional knowledge and skills”.  

Metacognition

According to Kruger and Dunning, the reason behind this is just because of lack of proficiency steals people from metacognitive skill to recognize their proficiency. In other word the skills to draft a good email are the same skills it takes to know if the email is well written one.

Therefore Metacognition is an ability to monitor and assess one’s own understanding. It is what makes people who are more proficient can better able to estimate what they exactly need to learn.

Finally coming to end of this discussion, estimating one’s capacity to accurately evaluate performance and compare it to others is important as it impacts learning and other choices. What I have shown here is that research shows, people seem to be limited in their ability to do this. Some researchers indicate that this is a more western phenomenon, as people in some non-western societies are taught to be more modest about their skills.