Well, I was just basking in the general approval of yesterday’s comments and thinking that being me pretty much rocks the thunderdome when I came across last month’s Salon article about how most voters don’t, can’t, change their minds about their favourite political candidates. That article in itself is worth a look. Not only does it relate to the comments in one of last week’s posts–that we all read a different book–but it’s stuffed with very skiffy scenarios to replace future televised presidential debates. (It’ll never happy but, hey, we can dream.) Tie that to the notion of using the latest imaging techniques by pollsters and spin-meisters to track mirror neuron activity and the whole thing becomes a serious techno-battle.
Anyway, the Salon article led me to a 1999 paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Here’s the abstract:
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because 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. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.
Basically, we all think we’re more special than average. And the dimmer we are, the more special we think we are. Yesterday I must have been feeling very dim indeed…
Nicola Griffith 
“tests of humor”? That sounds pretty strange.
Strange that you can test a sense of humour, or strange that people in testing situations can hang onto it?
“Hi, I’m Pavlov. Ring a bell?”Oh, this link so rocks! Thank you once again, Nicola. Yours failed in the humor dept,Sarah :]
sarah, well, I just tried to think of a good scientist joke and came up empty. Huh. Anyone out there got one?
Why is a moon rock tastier than an earth rock?Because it’s a little meteor.
What did the DNA say to the other DNA?Do these genes make me look fat? :P
What do you get when you take LSD with birth control pills?A trip without the kids.
Thank you, anonymous. I wonder what percentage of the great unwashed (and/or the pathologically tidy) don’t get those jokes…
Huh. Once again I’m weird: I usually <>under<>rate my performance. One fairly clear example: when I took the French achievement test for my college boards, I didn’t feel I’d done very well, and expected to see my rank as 60th percentile. As I recall, it was at least 80th, maybe somewhere in the 90s. (All my other scores were the 99th percentile, except maybe SAT math, which might have been 98th.)It’s ironic, because I often get people yammering stuff at me along the lines of “You think you’re so smart!” But I don’t, not really. Mostly I’m too acutely aware of what I don’t know.
It’s sorta like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: too hard on yourself, too soft on yourself, ah, just right.
Well now, for me I am usually too critical of myself. I grew up in an era when girls should not BE smart and if they were they should hide it. This indoctrination carried over into college. I made very good grades,was told I was a “model student” by my advisor,but you could not convince me of that. No one was more silently demanding of me than me.The too hard on myself stems from the self knowledge of just how MUCH I don’t know! I read some of these post and fortify that belief. I guess I am provincial by comparison. There are still so many things to see,to be experienced,to learn.Humor:I have a Gary Larson sense of humor. One of my favorite cartoons is a battered and bandaged pinata character picking a guy holding a stick from a lineup. My sisters say my brain has a short in the wiring.How many Communists does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution. :)
Self-confidence and self-esteem are often enemies of learning, but I think it’s good to find a balance. There’s nothing I like better than to embark on something brand new–history, Old English–and be able to cheerfully admit <>I know nothing<>, while being utterly confident I will learn. Most of us don’t know much, but that’s why I like the wacky interweb so much–experts just a few data packets away, mostly willing–nay, delighted–to share their knowledge.