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Blissful Ignorance: The Problem of Unrecognized Incompetence and Academic Performance

The skills that develop competence in a particular area are often the same skills needed to evaluate competence in that area. When people are unable to judge their own achievement, they are in a double bind; they have neither a particular skill nor the cognitive ability to realize their own level of incompetence. If students are unaware of their poor performance on tests, they are unlikely to realize their limitations. Correspondingly, the high performers may not recognize their ability to be successful. This study tests students’ self-recognized competence by having them estimate the grade they expected to receive on a test immediately following its completion. Poorer students significantly overestimated their performance; better students underestimated their performance. Poorer students became better estimators over time, while there was no similar improvement in better students’ self-assessments.