{"id":192,"date":"2023-03-23T12:05:37","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T11:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pcrest.com\/blog\/?p=192"},"modified":"2023-03-23T12:05:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T11:05:39","slug":"performance-getting-past-belief-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/23\/performance-getting-past-belief-to-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance: Getting Past Belief to Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

The Dunning-Kruger Effect<\/em> is generally defined as a cognitive bias in which individuals incorrectly OVERESTIMATE their abilities or knowledge in a specific area. A typical example is if we take a quiz about something specific and believe we did really well, yet grading shows the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If we believe<\/strong> we aced a quiz, we believe the answers we gave were aligned with the objectively correct answers\u2026that the circle of our knowledge perfectly overlapped with the circle of objectively true information. Our belief is shown to be in error when we get our grade; the circle of our belief about our performance didn\u2019t overlap the reality of our performance at all! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disconnect between how well we do and how well we believe we do is often chalked up to a lack of metacognition\u2014a failure to recognize our own ignorance in specific areas. That our knowledge was wrong is not the issue here; that we believed<\/em> it was right is far more concerning because holding that belief keeps us from realizing we have anything to learn\/change\/improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us probably remember being given a test as children and told to read through the whole test before starting\u2026and then finding out several embarrassing minutes later that there were instructions on the last page that instructed us to do nothing more than write our names on the test. Oops!<\/strong> It can be so easy to believe we have performed better than we truly did. Add in that there are things we aren\u2019t even aware<\/em><\/strong> we don\u2019t know (\u201cunknown unknowns\u201d) and we can begin to feel a sense of helplessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What should we do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing<\/strong> how well we performed at something, as opposed to simply holding a belief<\/strong> about our performance, requires more than doing the thing and consulting our intuition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To correct for any cognitive bias and tendency to overestimate our performance, we must use a rational (knowledge-based) strategy similar to this one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Identifying and clarifying performance expectations<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Setting or being aware of performance criteria<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Determining the measures of success<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Measuring our performance against those standards<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Applying these steps before and after doing something like taking a quiz will give us a much more realistic idea of how well we did. This is because the steps prompt us to engage in a rigorous and metacognitively-focused process of planning and analyzing our performance with respect to the objective requirements and criteria of the performance<\/em><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Through this process, we learn 1)<\/strong> how well we should expect to do, 2)<\/strong> what a successful performance looks like, and 3)<\/strong> how to measure our own performance, bringing the circle of our understanding about our performance into effective overlap with the circle of the reality of our performance. Voila!<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n
    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Dunning-Kruger Effect is generally defined as a cognitive bias in which individuals incorrectly OVERESTIMATE their abilities or knowledge in a specific area. A typical example is if we take…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,56],"tags":[58,57,10],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-criteria","category-performance","tag-bias","tag-metacognition","tag-quality","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/bias.jpg?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pcrest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}