People with the least competence in a given subject consistently rate themselves as the most competent — a phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect, identified by Cornell psychologists in 1999 — in research that can quietly explain why the most confidently wrong people in any room are often the ones who know the least

In December 1999, two researchers at Cornell University — Justin Kruger, then a graduate student, and David Dunning, a professor in the psychology department — published a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology with the title “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” [...] The post People with the least competence in a given subject consistently rate themselves as the most competent — a phenomenon c