tyler_durden;143668 Wrote: 
> If you read this paper,
> http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf, you find out the
> the group that ranked themselves highest among their peers continued to
> do so even after they were shown their own low scores AND the higher
> scores of their peers.  
> 
> It is a shame so many suffer the handicap of poor metacognition...
> 
> TD

Actually that's not quite accurate, unless I'm misremembering (I read
that quite a long while back).  I think the point was that the
low-scorers, after being asked to grade as best they could the tests of
their peers, didn't adjust their assesment of themselves to make it more
accurate.  On the other hand the high-scorers did.  It simply shows that
the low-scorers didn't understand the material on the tests very well -
not a big surprise.

I think that study was rather flawed - the results can be explained
simply by the fact that if you're on the low end of a distribution
you're liable to overestimate yourself (since it's hard to
underestimate yourself), the opposite for the high end, plus the
observation that people usually think they're better than average
(apparently Cornell undergrads think, on average, that they are in the
66th percentile when the correct average is 50th, by definition). 
Those two facts explain essentially everything they found.

And no - this certainly doesn't mean we should all give up if we're bad
at something.  It just means we should be catious of overestimating our
ability.  It's quite important, really - people very often think they
can do things they can't, like pick stocks better than the market
average, or hear the difference between a $1000 power cord and the
Walmart version.


-- 
opaqueice
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