Author Tom Vanderbilt politely congratulated his opponent after losing to him during a chess tournament. The victor was an eight-year-old boy who sipped chocolate milk from a little box with a straw during the round. Vanderbilt, then approaching age 50, humbly updated the tournament director with the results.
Learning chess was one of the experiences Vanderbilt chronicled in his book Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning (he also learned juggling, singing, and surfing). Chess was also the only one of his target skills that provided a sense of how he compared to others. Tournament stats and ratings meant Vanderbilt knew his general skill level.
However, most life experiences don’t provide chess-tournament-type feedback. Psychologists have found that when people evaluate themselves, those who perform the worst are often the most overconfident in their abilities.
What is the Dunning-Kruger Effect?
In the late 1990s, psychologist David Dunning was a professor at Cornell University when he noticed that students who wanted to discuss a poor test grade seemed surprised by their performance. Often students felt confident going into the exam. Other times, they missed questions they thought they answered correctly.
