reinforcement used in modern teaching. It's from a paper I'm reading at
the moment.
People who score lowest in tests assume they do better whereas those who
do very well are more often likely to assume they did adequately or
poorly. The surprsing result in this study is showing a person their
incompetence can make them smarter.
"
It suggests that the way to make incompetent individuals realize their
own incompetence is to make them competent.
"
From
Kruger, J. at al. 1999, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in
Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/unskilled.html
It's not about competence and incompetence per se. It's about the
ability to recognise incompetence and how to become competent.
Recognising my errors and falibilites - truly recognising them - gives
me the opportunity to correct them. People who estimate themselves to be
good at something may be less inclined to improve or recognise their
need to improve.
The study itself looks at 4 predictions. It's worth a read just to have
the effect of questioning your own abilities and competencies,
especially those things that you regard yourself as doing well in.
This isn't what I'd rate as a good study but I don't know much about
those evalutations. The important thing for this paper is what I'm
taking from it which is that I need to reflect on the areas I feel I'm
competent (few at the moment) and strive to do better in all of them.
The paper also once again shows me just how desperate I am to be
competent and good. My heart sank when I read the idea that my
estimation of competence may be an error. I may be stupid. That's really
bad for me. But it's good to have that realisation because it's
something I can work on. Accepting my fallibity and stupidity is the
start to changing it.
I wouldn't improve on something that is perfect...right?
I'm just getting down to the discussion bit and there's tons of
interesting stuff in there. This is why I love reading beyond the abstract.
The error in those who are top scorers is also important. They tend to
underestimate their abilities (I know, but I'm not underestimating so I
can be a top scorer. It's probably just low self esteem or something).
They assume tat everyone is like them - the false consensus effect - so
everyone will do as well as they do.
This paragraph is kinda cool.
"
More conclusive evidence came from Phase 2 of Study 3. Once top-quartile
participants learned how poorly their peers had performed, they raised
their self-appraisals to more accurate levels. We have argued that
unskilled individuals suffer a dual burden: Not only do they perform
poorly, but they fail to realize it. It thus appears that extremely
competent individuals suffer a burden as well. Although they perform
competently, they fail to realize that their proficiency is not
necessarily shared by their peers.
"
Of course all of this comes with the caveat that these are about
consensus measures of intelligence and competence and in real life
they're about as useful as a chocolate teapot. I remember the stories of
East London market traders being recruited to the City trading floors.
They had natural skills whereas those with degrees in finance simply
didn't and their education in the classroom wasn't as important as an
education from the school of hard knocks (or life).
--
This paper also relates to another aspect of my personal life. I often
don't understand why people don't like me. I can comphrehend why but at
the same time I find it hard to understand enough to change myself. I
lack social skills but when I try to do better it seems I just end up
putting my foot in it. Being misunderstood is common for a lot of people
I think. It's about making that step or return to social competence that
- at the moment - totally baffles me.
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