Do People Have Insight Into Their Abilities? A Metasynthesis

Abstract

Having insight into one's abilities is essential, yet it remains unclear whether people generally perceive their skills accurately or inaccurately. In the present analysis, we examined the overall correspondence between self-evaluations of ability (e.g., academic ability, intelligence, language competence, medical skills, sports ability, and vocational skills) and objective performance measures (e.g., standardized test scores, grades, and supervisor evaluations) across 22 meta-analyses, in addition to considering factors that moderate this relationship. Although individual meta-analytic effects ranged from .09 to .63, the mean correlation between ability self-evaluations and performance outcomes across meta-analyses was moderate (M = .29, SD = .11). Further, the relation was stronger when self-evaluations were specific to a given domain rather than broad and when performance tasks were objective, familiar, or low in complexity. Taken together, these findings indicate that people have only moderate insight into their abilities but also underscore the contextual factors that enable accurate self-perception of ability.

The Physics of Teams: Interdependence, Measurable Entropy, and Computational Emotion

“…Unlike Smith's [7] "invisible hand" or the physical sciences where "reality is not as it appears" to human observers [25], game theory and wide swaths of social science are based on, at best, simple observations of individuals and, at worst, self-reported observations ( [26]; e.g., questionnaires, surveys, interviews). The value of actual behaviors vs. self-reports of constructs poorly correlate, if at all, with most of the variance between actual behavior and self-reported behavior unaccounted [20].…”

“…Wang and Busemeyer [19] use the concept of complementarity to account qualitatively for order effects; we use complementarity to account for the gap between behavior and self-reported observations of behavior (e.g., [20]), as well as the different interpretations of reality by members of opposing teams (e.g., present-day supporters of Einstein's views on quantum theory vs. Bohr's acausal Copenhagen interpretation; in Lawless [2] and Bohr [27]). …”

“…In this study, we apply quantum-like models to the study of interdependence (e.g., [22], p. 147). From Wendt [23], "humans live in highly interdependent societies" (p. 150); interdependence, however, creates a measurement problem [2], which Wendt ([23], p. 67) describes as "the apparent impossibility of an objective measurement, " and which we have linked to the behavior-cognition gap, for example, between the objective measures of behavior and the self-reported subjective accounts of behavior (e.g., [20]). Wendt ([23], p. 34) adds that a quantum-like model "offers the potential for revealing new social phenomena, " which we demonstrate by determining the size of teams, heretofore an open problem ( [9], p. 33).…”

“…Busemeyer and Wang ([18], p. 43) add that "Quantum cognition is an emerging field that uses mathematical principles of quantum theory to help formalize and understand cognitive systems and processes." Wang and Busemeyer [19] reintroduce the concept of complementarity to account for order effects; we use complementarity to account for the stable gap between physical (objective) measures of behavior and self-reported (subjective) observations of behavior (e.g., [20]), as well as for the different interpretations of reality common to individuals (e.g., present-day supporters of Einstein's views on quantum theory vs. Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation; in Lawless [2]), and the different skills held by members of a team, where each may have subjective interpretations and beliefs (e.g., in the search for justice, construing the courtroom as a team, prosecutors, and defense attorneys work together by pursuing different theories of a crime; [11,21]). …”

Self-enhancement: Conceptualization and Assessment

“…Relative to the typical finding in the field, our accuracy correlations were high. Zell and Krizan (2014) reported a meta-analytical estimate of r S,T = .29. When using this modest accuracy correlation in our simulation, both discrepancy scores became noticeably more dependent on S, (r S,S-T = .605 and r S,RS = .954; see Leising et al for a very similar empirical result, i.e., r = .92, their Table 2).…”