Medical Trainees and the Dunning–Kruger Effect: When They Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

Abstract

wrote a seminal article titled ''Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.'' 1 They described 4 experiments in which they asked college students to estimate their performance on tests involving humor, grammar, and logic. They were struck by the finding that students who performed poorly often grossly overestimated their performance. They also noticed that students who objectively performed well often subjectively underestimated their performance. This phenomenon is commonly known as the Dunning-Kruger Curve or the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It attempts to explain why people experience a blind spot when gauging their competence. Dunning and Kruger suggested that People hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. .. 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. 1

“UHAND”—A National Cancer Institute Funded Partnership to Advance Cancer Health Equity through Scholar Training

“…Overall, research self-efficacy significantly increased over the 2-year program, although this was driven by the undergraduate scholars and followed an overall decrease in self-efficacy from the pre-program to the mid-program assessments. The latter may be explained by the Dunning–Kruger Effect, whereby inexperienced people tend to have high confidence and falsely and unknowingly rate their performance highly [ 39 ]. Over time and with gained experience, they realize how much they do not know, and this may cause a sharp decline in self-confidence [ 39 ].…”

“…The latter may be explained by the Dunning–Kruger Effect, whereby inexperienced people tend to have high confidence and falsely and unknowingly rate their performance highly [ 39 ]. Over time and with gained experience, they realize how much they do not know, and this may cause a sharp decline in self-confidence [ 39 ]. One report has shown that less competent junior physicians tended to rate their self-efficacy higher than what it was, while competent junior physicians, especially women, tended to rate their self-efficacy lower than those who were less competent [ 39 ].…”

“…Over time and with gained experience, they realize how much they do not know, and this may cause a sharp decline in self-confidence [ 39 ]. One report has shown that less competent junior physicians tended to rate their self-efficacy higher than what it was, while competent junior physicians, especially women, tended to rate their self-efficacy lower than those who were less competent [ 39 ]. Suggestions for prospective programs would be for the program directors to be aware of the Dunning–Kruger Effect, and particularly that self-efficacy may not translate directly to performance [ 39 ].…”

“…One report has shown that less competent junior physicians tended to rate their self-efficacy higher than what it was, while competent junior physicians, especially women, tended to rate their self-efficacy lower than those who were less competent [ 39 ]. Suggestions for prospective programs would be for the program directors to be aware of the Dunning–Kruger Effect, and particularly that self-efficacy may not translate directly to performance [ 39 ]. Tailoring the assessment to the education level of the scholar would be advisable (e.g., undergraduate vs. graduate scholar) by setting clear expectations, measures, and providing factual feedback on skills for undergraduate scholars [ 39 ].…”

“…Suggestions for prospective programs would be for the program directors to be aware of the Dunning–Kruger Effect, and particularly that self-efficacy may not translate directly to performance [ 39 ]. Tailoring the assessment to the education level of the scholar would be advisable (e.g., undergraduate vs. graduate scholar) by setting clear expectations, measures, and providing factual feedback on skills for undergraduate scholars [ 39 ]. Another suggestion is to have assessments and feedback from multiple sources to accurately capture the scholars’ progress in the program [ 39 ].…”