Maya

The least competent people are often the most confident. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with limited skill or knowledge in a particular area dramatically overestimate their own abilities. The reason is simple yet paradoxical: the same skills needed to do something well are also the skills needed to accurately judge how well you’re doing it. Without that self-awareness, incompetent individuals remain blissfully unaware of their shortcomings — and become overly confident as a result. As Charles Darwin noted: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” On the flip side, truly skilled people often fall into the opposite trap. Because a task feels easy to them, they assume it must be easy for everyone else. As a result, experts tend to underestimate their own abilities relative to others, while the least competent loudly overestimate theirs. This creates a striking gap: the people who know the least are often the most sure of themselves, while the most competent frequently doubt their own superiority.