Incompetence and the Failure of Feedback
One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail,
through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled. This is not
a new puzzle. Sullivan, in 1953, marveled at "the failure of
learning which has left their capacity for fantastic, self-centered
delusions so utterly unaffected by a life-long history of educative
events" (p. 80). With that observation in mind, it is striking that our
student participants overestimated their standing on academically
oriented tests as familiar to them as grammar and logical reason-
ing. Although our analysis suggests that incompetent individuals
are unable to spot their poor performances themselves, one would
have thought negative feedback would have been inevitable at
some point in their academic career. So why had they not learned?
One reason is that people seldom receive negative feedback
about their skills and abilities from others in everyday life (Blum-
berg, 1972; Darley & Fazio, 1980; Goffman, 1955; Matlin &
Stang, 1978; Tesser & Rosen, 1975). Even young children are
familiar with the notion that "if you do not have something nice to
say, don't say anything at all." Second, the bungled robbery
attempt of McArthur Wheeler not withstanding, some tasks and
settings preclude people from receiving self-correcting informa-
tion that would reveal the suboptimal nature of their decisions
(Einhorn, 1982). Third, even if people receive negative feedback,
they still must come to an accurate understanding of why that
failure has occurred. The problem with failure is that it is subject
to more attributional ambiguity than success. For success to occur,
many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply
effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For failure to occur, the lack of
any one of these components is sufficient. Because of this, even if
people receive feedback that points to a lack of skill, they may
attribute it to some other factor (Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983;
Snyder, Shenkel, & Lowery, 1977).
Finally, Study 3 showed that incompetent individuals may be
unable to take full advantage of one particular kind of feedback:
social comparison. One of the ways people gain insight into their
own competence is by watching the behavior of others (Festinger,
1954; Gilbert, Giesler & Morris, 1995). In a perfect world, every-
one could see the judgments and decisions that other people reach,
accurately assess how competent those decisions are, and then
revise their view of their own competence by comparison. How-
ever, Study 3 showed that incompetent individuals are unable to
take full advantage of such opportunities. Compared with their
more expert peers, they were less able to spot competence when
they saw it, and as a consequence, were less able to learn that their
ability estimates were incorrect.
teworthy" probabilistic abilities to develop killer tricks, and "a friend of his"):
