I stumbled today across this psychology paper titled "Unskilled and Unware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". The abstract reads:

people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

In one of the studies described in the paper, people were given a test, and then upon completing it, asked how they think they performed compared to the other people who had taken the test. The people who were in the bottom quartile (i.e. the "dumbest" 25 people out of 100) thought they had performed in the 60 to 70 percentile. The people in the top quartile (i.e. the smartest 25 people out of 100) also thought they had performed in the 60 to 70 percentile. In fact, everyone thought they were in the 60 to 70 percentile! In other words, everyone thought they were "above average" (50 percentile).

They then took the same people, and showed them the answers that other people gave for the same test, and then asked the participants if they would like to re-evaluate themselves. The people in the top 25 percentile, having enough competence to distinguish between correct and incorrect answers, realized that their peers had mostly performed worse than they did, and so adjust their evaluation of themselves to the 80th percentile.

The bottom 25 percentile, meanwhile, even after seeing the answers of their peers, also raised their estimate slightly (63-73 percentile)! You would think that after seeing other people's answers, they'd realize that their answers were wrong, or inferior, and thus lower their estimation of themselves, but instead, they raised it!

This paper was brought up due to a discussion about how people could be stupid and not realize it. In this specific discussion, a programmer named "Jay" had come up with a horribly inelegant, clumsy, buggy, slow and bloated solution to a problem which is "well-understood". That means, this is one of those problems that you should have already seen in an introductory university or college course, for which being able to solve the problem should have been a prerequisite to passing that course, and for which the non-introductory courses assume you fully understand when they build upon that knowledge to introduce more complex topics. I won't get into the specifics of the actual problem, as it involves terminology that you may not be familiar with if you haven't taken the appropriate courses. If you're interested, you can click on the link and read all about it.

Okay, so "Jay" is an idiot. So what? There are idiots all over the world. The infuriating thing is that Jay is considered the "star" programmer at the company where he works. He actually believes himself to be competent at his job. How could this possibly be, people asked. And so someone posted a link to that psychology paper.

While I found the paper to be an interesting read, I also found the reactions to the papers to be extremely interesting. Everyone reacted to the paper in the same way: Essentially, they all said that this paper reflects their perception, and that they have a few people in mind they'd like to send the paper to.

I think I might print out the first page of that and leave it on a few people's desks one night... Unfortunately, those people wouldn't get that it was about them.

I considered printing out the APA paper and anonymously stuffing it in peoples' mailboxes — not only in the mailboxes of those programmers who I feel are totally incompetent, but also in the mailboxes of their managers who still think they perform(ed) well. I decided against it not because I think I would get in trouble — they'd have no way of detecting who was the culprit — but again because their own incompetence would prevent them from detecting that the paper is targeted at them.

And so on. It's interesting, because it reinforces the study. It seems nobody (but me) has asked the question "Wait a minute... does that mean I am overestimating my abilities?" Instead, people's first reactions were "Damn straight! Everyone around me is an idiot! They should all read the paper!"

Anyway, I tried to figure out how one could determine if they were competent or not. Self-confidence would not help, because there doesn't seem to be any correlation between confidence and skill. Everyone thinks they're above average. Comparing oneself to others won't help either: if you incompetent, you won't be able to recognize the competency of others. Having others rate you doesn't help either. The people who are more competent that you will tell you that they're more competent than you, and the people who are less competent than you will tell you that they're more competent than you.

It really seems there is nothing you can do to determine your own competency level. So I decided not to even try. Instead, the strategy I've come up with is to just keep your mind open to new ideas. If someone does something differently that you did, don't immediately dismiss it as an inferior solution. Consider why they did things the way they did, whether it made sense for them to do things the way they did, and whether it would ever make sense for you to do things the way they did.

Fortunately for me, I've been doing this for as long as I could remember, so I don't actually have to change anything about myself. =) Well, actually, when I do this, it seems I come off as confrontational. "Why did you do it your way? Why didn't you do it my way? Isn't my way better?" When I go through this line of questioning with my non-engineer friends, they tend to accuse of trying to pick a fight, or criticizing inconsequential actions, etc.

The paper mentions an interesting analogy with anosognosia:

Caused by certain types of damage to the right side of the brain, anosognosia leaves people paralyzed on the left side of their body. But more than that, when doctors place a cup in front of such patients and ask them to pick it up with their left hand, patients no only fail to comply but also fail to understand why. When asked to explain their failure, such patients might state that they are tired, that they did not hear the doctor's instructions, or that they did not feel like responding — but never that they are suffering from paralysis. In essence, anosognosia not only causes paralysis, but also the inability to realize that one is paralyzed.

As an aside, Wikipedia gives a different definition of anosognosia, and generalizes it to just being unaware of one's impairment, and not merely of being unaware of paralysis. They list, for example, being unaware of one's visual blindness. What a frightning though: to be blind, and to be unaware of it! Would such a patient refuse a walking stick, or to be accompanied when crossing the street, protesting vehemently that he is not blind?

There are some people very dear to me whom I discover have been "lying" to me, and others who seem unable to perceive the logical fallacies in their own thought process. They will, for example, given certain premises, come to irrational conclusions. When I point out the logical inconsistency in their train of thought, this seems to only make them more stubbornly resolute of their own correctness.

I could never understand this behaviour, but I this paper, and Wikipedia article, is giving me more insight into this condition. How strange and alien a concept it is, to me, for a person to unaware of their own failings (whether physical or mental).

Of course, for all I know, I may very well be unaware of some sort of physical or mental failing, that my friends and family have been trying to convince me that I have, but that I've been denying, and immediately forgetting about. Indeed, I suspect that people who are unaware of their failings in the manner described above, are unaware that they are unaware of their failings! And so it must be a very strange and alien concept to everyone!