The amount of effort people invest in seeming smarter than they are, for example in situations like hiring or sales, suggests to me that people’s gut judgments are easy enough to fool to be worth it.
I expect that what people are actually doing is using a few heuristics to make the judgment. I would also expect that courtesy of things like Dunning-Kruger, people towards the bottom will be as bad at estimating IQ as they are competence at any particular thing.
If we just stick with the intuition provided by fact that some people are really terrible at guessing this sort of thing and some people are not, I further expect that what people use as a heuristic changes with ability level. In example: people at the bottom might base it on whether someone agrees with them about stuff; those in the middle might focus heavily on whether someone has a smart-person job like doctor or lawyer; people towards the top might look more at the way someone does things, like some sign that they chose to think carefully about it or apply some technique known to them.
I would also expect that courtesy of things like Dunning-Kruger, people towards the bottom will be as bad at estimating IQ as they are competence at any particular thing.
In two of the four cases, there’s an obvious positive correlation between perceived skill and actual skill, which is the opposite of the pop-sci conception of Dunning-Kruger.
The weaker claim is what holds in my example: in 4 out of 4 cases, the bottom quartile was very wrong in their assessment. I was speculating as to possible causal explanations; I think it is how they do the assessment.
Looking at those graphs, I can think of one rule that explains all four groups: say you are a above average when asked does the trick.
The amount of effort people invest in seeming smarter than they are, for example in situations like hiring or sales, suggests to me that people’s gut judgments are easy enough to fool to be worth it.
I expect that what people are actually doing is using a few heuristics to make the judgment. I would also expect that courtesy of things like Dunning-Kruger, people towards the bottom will be as bad at estimating IQ as they are competence at any particular thing.
If we just stick with the intuition provided by fact that some people are really terrible at guessing this sort of thing and some people are not, I further expect that what people use as a heuristic changes with ability level. In example: people at the bottom might base it on whether someone agrees with them about stuff; those in the middle might focus heavily on whether someone has a smart-person job like doctor or lawyer; people towards the top might look more at the way someone does things, like some sign that they chose to think carefully about it or apply some technique known to them.
FWIW, the original Dunning-Kruger study did not show the effect that it’s become known for. See: https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/
In particular:
The weaker claim is what holds in my example: in 4 out of 4 cases, the bottom quartile was very wrong in their assessment. I was speculating as to possible causal explanations; I think it is how they do the assessment.
Looking at those graphs, I can think of one rule that explains all four groups: say you are a above average when asked does the trick.