Research has shown that some students who underperform in mathematics overestimate their performance, while others who excel in mathematics underestimate it. Looking at this mismatch of performance and confidence judgement—the Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE)—the current study investigates how well students’ confidence judgement and item-specific mathematics competence relate with each other and whether such a relationship differs across six European countries (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Serbia and Portugal). We also examine whether perceived competence, mathematics identity, gender, socioeconomic status and immigration background predict this mismatch and whether these demographic factors function differently between the examined countries. The results show that the DKE could be found across grades three and four in all six countries. However, there are country-specific patterns regarding the relationship between performance, mathematics identity and perceived competence; the DKE; and how different demographic variables predict its occurrences in particular subpopulations. Looking at this mismatch of performance and confidence judgement—the Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE)—the current study investigates how well students’ confidence judgement and item-specific mathematics competence relate with each other and whether such a relationship differs across six European countries (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Serbia and Portugal). We also examine whether perceived competence, mathematics identity, gender, socioeconomic status and immigration background predict this mismatch and whether these demographic factors function differently between the examined countries. The results show that the DKE could be found across grades three and four in all six countries. The Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE) refers to the cognitive bias where individuals with low abilities or knowledge overestimate their skills or expertise, while those with high abilities or knowledge tend to underestimate their skills relative to others (Dunning, 2011 , 2015 ; Kruger & Dunning, 1999 ). Nevertheless, overconfidence can be an adaptive response to certain situations (Parker et al.,  2012 ), warranting a thorough examination of individual differences in confidence and performance and their potential miscalibration (Kleitman et al., 2019 ). The Dunning–Kruger effect—to be or not to be? The Dunning–Kruger effect arises when an individual’s relatively low competence prevents them from accurately assessing their performance level (Kruger & Dunning, 1999 ) because low performers are ‘operating from incomplete and corrupted knowledge, they would make many mistakes and not recognise those mistakes as they made them’ (Dunning, 2011 , p. 260). Nonetheless, there were variations in the patterns and severity of this effect. Specifically, fourth graders appeared to be more prone to a lack of (meta)reflection on their competence than third graders. We have found the most considerable disparity in the within-quintile relationship between the two grades in Sweden, Serbia and Portugal. Table 5 Pearson’s correlation coefficients between mathematics performance and confidence judgements for the total sample and within each quintile of math scores in grade 4 Full size table Who is more susceptible to the Dunning–Kruger effect? Low achievers tended to overestimate their test item-specific confidence judgement compared with their high achiever counterparts (Dunning, 2011 ; Kruger & Dunning, 1999 ). Thus, the effect is more visible among students scoring below the third quintile (around the 60th percentile). Specifically, students in the lowest quintile of mathematics performance in Estonia, Norway, Serbia and Sweden significantly overestimated their item-specific mathematics competence. However, variations in the DKE were also noted across countries, suggesting that different mechanisms and factors may contribute to the miscalibration of competence and confidence judgements within different performance groups or countries. The current study contributes to Dunning–Kruger’s research by comparing younger individuals with those within Europe. The findings highlight the importance of educators supporting students, particularly those with weaker skills, in striking a balance between self-confidence and actual competence. Confidence: The best non-cognitive predictor of academic achievement? Educational Psychology, 34 (1), 9–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2013.814194 Article Google Scholar Stankov, L. (1999). Mining on the “no man’s land” between intelligence and personality. In P. L. Ackerman, P. C. Kyllonen, & R. D. Roberts (Eds.), Learning and individual differences: Process, trait, and content determinants (pp. 315–337). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10315-014 Sullivan, P. J., Ragogna, M., & Dithurbide, L. (2019). An investigation into the Dunning-Kruger effect in sport coaching. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17 (6), 591–599. When competence and confidence are at odds: a cross-country examination of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Eur J Psychol Educ 39 , 1537–1559 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-024-00804-x Download citation Received : 13 July 2023 Revised : 21 December 2023 Accepted : 28 January 2024 Published : 19 February 2024 Version of record : 19 February 2024 Issue date : June 2024 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-024-00804-x Share this article Anyone Copy shareable link to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Keywords Dunning–Kruger effect Confidence judgement Perceived competence Mathematics SES Gender Immigration background Profiles Kajsa Yang Hansen View author profile Cecilia Thorsen View author profile Jelena Radišić View author profile Francisco Peixoto View author profile Anu Laine View author profile Xin Liu View author profile Associated Content Part of a collection: Motivation for Mathematics Advertisement

<h4>Background</h4>The intrinsic damage and external hazards of smoking are major risk factors for poorer health and are recognized as a global health issue of concern in geriatric health. This study aims to assess the Dunning-Kruger effect through the influence of subjective health perceptions on smoking behavior in older adults.<h4>Methods</h4>This study used data from the 2018 Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (N = 9,683) provided by the Center for Healthy Aging and Development Studies at Peking University. A binary logistic model was used to examine whether the Dunning-Kruger effect affects smoking behavior in older adults, and a linear probability model was used as a commentary baseline model for logistic regression to prevent measurement bias. In addition, a mediating analysis was used to examine the mechanisms through which the Dunning-Kruger effect occurs.<h4>Results</h4>Older adults often overestimated their current health status and underestimated the health risks of smoking, causing the Dunning-Kruger effect to arise from their inadequate self-perceived health (i.e., older adults are more likely to smoke when they have better self-rated health or when hypertension, cardiopathy, stroke, and diabetes have little or no impact on their daily lives). These observations can be explained by the older adults' subjective health perceptions arising from their ingenuous understanding of their health, which indirectly influences their smoking behavior to some extent.<h4>Conclusion</h4>Older adults' self-perceived health was associated with smoking behavior. Public health institutions should improve older adults' health perceptions so that they objectively understand their own health status.

Competencies related to the evaluation of own cognitive processes, called metacognitive monitoring, are crucial as they help decide whether to persist in or desist from cognitive efforts. One of the most well-known phenomena in this context-the Dunning-Kruger effect-is that less skilled people tend to overestimate their performance. This effect has been reported for various kinds of performance including creativity. More recently, however, it has been suggested that this phenomenon could be a statistical artifact caused by the better-than-average effect and by regression toward the mean. Therefore, we examined the Dunning-Kruger effect in the context of creative thinking performance (i.e., divergent thinking ability) across two studies (Study 1: N = 425; Study 2: N = 317) and applied the classical quartile-based analysis as well as newly recommended, advanced statistical approaches: the Glejser test of heteroscedasticity and nonlinear quadratic regression. We found that the results indeed depended on the employed statistical method: While classical analyses supported the Dunning-Kruger effect across all conditions, it was not consistently supported by the more advanced statistical methods. These findings are in line with recent work challenging certain assumptions of the Dunning-Kruger effect and we discuss factors that undermine accurate self-assessments, especially in the context of creative performance. Here, the Dunning–Kruger effect would be confirmed if a positive monotonic quadratic effect is observed in the data. Both approaches have been recommended as they offer unique information about the relationship between self-assessed and objectively measured ability. Later research, however, indicated that the Glejser test may be a less direct test of the Dunning–Kruger effect as the absolute residuals do not allow for a distinction between over- and underestimation 35 . Specifically, a negative Glejser correlation indicates higher misestimation by low-performers but provides no information about the direction of this misestimation. Explorations of the Dunning Kruger effect in creative performance The accuracy of self-assessments of creativity has been a topic of interest for some time 37 , 38 . However, according to our best knowledge, there have only been two studies that specifically examined the Dunning–Kruger effect in creativity. The first one used the classical quartile method 39 and found that, across the whole sample people overestimated their creative performance in three different creative thinking tasks (the Similarities Test, the Remote Associates Test, and the Product Improvement Task). The first test of the Dunning–Kruger effect was based on the classical method used by the original authors 20 . In line with them, we transformed our performance measures into We interpreted results as supporting a Dunning–Kruger effect if the ANOVA resulted in a significant interaction and the pairwise comparisons indicated that the lowest quartile showed the largest positive difference between self-assessment and performance (overestimation). As a second way of testing the Dunning–Kruger effect, we computed the Glejser correlation 34 , a measure of the heteroscedasticity of residuals 33 . Following the recommendations by Gignac and Zajenkowski 33 , we considered these analyses as supporting a Dunning–Kruger effect if the Δ R 2 between step one and two as well as the sr 2 of the quadratic term were significant. Of note, since the quadratic term is the only predictor entered in the second step of these analyses, its sr 2 is identical to the ΔR 2 between step one and two. For this reason, we only report ΔR 2 . Glejser test of heteroscedasticity On a merely descriptive level, we observed small negative correlations between absolute residuals and DT performance across all conditions (see Fig. 2 ), but they reached statistical significance only in specific cases (see Table 4 ). In study 1, we found support for Dunning–Kruger effects in relative pre- and post-task self-assessments but not in absolute pre- or post-task self-assessments. While the Glejser correlation for relative post-task self-assessments was also significant in study 2, the one for relative pre-task self-assessments was not. Moreover, in study 2 absolute pre-task self-assessments also showed a significant negative Glejser correlation, while the respective correlation for absolute post-task self-assessments was still not significant. Thus, only one of four conditions showed consistent Dunning–Kruger effects in both samples (relative post-task self-assessment). Figure 2 Glejser Correlations of Heteroscedasticity. Lines and shaded areas around them represent linear associations with 95% confidence bands. DT divergent thinking performance. SA self-assessment. Table 4 The Glejser test of heteroscedasticity. Thus, these analyses only support a Dunning–Kruger effect for self-assessments made before the task in comparison to others (see also Fig. 3 ). Notably, this finding did not replicate in study 2 (Δ R 2 < 0.001, 95% CI [0.00, 0.01], F (1 , 314) = 0 . 15, p = 0.702). Figure 3 Nonlinear regression between Measured and Self-Assessed Creativity. Lines and shaded areas around them represent quadratic lines of best fit with 95% confidence bands. DT divergent thinking performance. SA Self-assessment. Discussion Creative challenges are often ill-defined, with unclear evaluation criteria and infinite possible solutions. Therefore, self-assessment may be vital in regulating the creative process. In sum, we observed a below-average effect when people compare their creative performance to others, which may be due to inherent uncertainty of creative processes (compared to other domains where people know when they solved a task correctly) which eventually decreases people's confidence. Our main research question was if uncreative people are particularly inaccurate in their performance assessment as assumed by the Dunning–Kruger effect.

This study addresses a novel perspective for analyzing the source of confidence in human behavior. The concept of confidence was examined via the relationship between two phenomena in the area of machine learning and psychology, namely the Dunning-Kruger effect and the curse of dimensionality. A relationship was established between these two phenomena which were investigated in the light of neuroscience. This study claims that confidence is highly related with the total time it takes to reach specific information and this relationship is inversely proportional. Image gender classification algorithm was used to analyze this relationship for this study and the curves which were obtained as a result of this analysis was compared with the curve of Dunning-Kruger effect and curse of dimensionality. This relationship has been explained by the knowledge of human's problem-solving ability and mathematical models of memory.

This manuscript describes the relationship between students' redox understandings and confidence as measured by the Redox Concept Inventory (ROXCI) which assesses symbolic and particulate redox concepts. The ROXCI was administered to two samples of 1st- and 2nd-semester general chemistry students after the students were taught and tested on redox concepts in their classrooms. Cluster analysis was used to identify groups of students with similar response patterns, based upon both total scores and average confidence on the ROXCI. Three clusters of students were identified in both samples: students with (1) moderate total scores and high confidence, (2) low total scores and low confidence, and (3) low total scores but high confidence. Clusters were further analyzed at an individual item level using average confidence, individual item difficulties, and the Confidence Discrimination Quotient (CDQ). Findings align with the Dunning–Kruger effect, i.e. in which students demonstrated a false sense of confidence regarding their own poor performance, and therefore, exemplify meta-ignorance. Descriptions of the clusters, example misconceptions held by the students regarding oxidation numbers and electron transfer, and the implications of this research are discussed.

Cognitive bias A cognitive bias happens when someone makes a bad choice that they think is a good choice. This bias is an important part of the study of cognitive psychology.[1] Overview Cognitive biases do happen. Primitive humans and animals do things which seem foolish later. The scientific method limits the results of cognitive bias. Cognitive bias is a natural consequence of our using "gut feelings" to make decisions when those decisions cannot be made rational because the evidence is not available.[2] List of cognitive biases Some of the cognitive biases, are - Gambler's fallacy, and False consensus effect, and Dunning–Kruger effect; These three are often in use, in regard to estimation, or when people are asked to judge the value of a quantity. - Loss aversion, and Action bias, and Cheerleader effect; These three are often part of when deciding or choosing one option out of several. - Cognitive dissonance, and Groupthink, and Selection bias, and Clustering illusion, and Gender bias, and Pareidolia; These six are used in hypothesis assessment (or when finding out if a statement is true or false).

This empirical study examines the relationship between knowledge accuracy, self-confidence, and perceived opinion leadership in the context of agricultural issues. Using data from a representative online survey of the German population (n = 2,022), the study analyses how objective factual knowledge and subjective confidence are associated with individuals’ self-reported role as opinion leaders, with particular attention to confidence calibration and the Dunning–Kruger Effect (DKE). The theoretical framing integrates Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and the Two-Step Flow of Communication Model (TS

The Science and Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) strand is considered by many to be a hard strand for senior high school students, because of this, many students tend to overestimate their skills on a difficult subject. This study explored students’ experiences and thoughts on the Dunning-Kruger effect, a psychological phenomenon where students tend to overestimate their own abilities in certain school activities such as group projects and recitations. The participants included Grade 11 senior high school students that are enrolled in the STEM strand. Phenomenological research design and data collection included an interview guide, a validation tool, consent forms, and a transcription writing guide. Thematic analysis was used to gather a total of eight (8) essential themes. These were derived from sixty (60) initial themes, and twenty-three (23) clustered themes. The Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is associated with emotional responses and frequently conceals a lack of actual knowledge that is shown through more in-depth questioning, was defined by participants as an exaggerated sense of self-importance used to conceal insecurity and reject criticism. In contrast to competence, which is the application of abilities with humility and perseverance, STEM students characterized confidence as self-trust and presence that can become excessive. Maintaining a balance between the two is crucial to avoiding the traps of either overconfidence or under confidence. To address this, it is crucial to establish supportive environments that promote self-awareness, humility, and open criticism in order to lessen overconfidence and assist STEM students in better understanding their skills and working together for both individual and group development.

This study examined the influence of consumer empowerment and its self-assessment on consumers’ information search behavior and consumer life satisfaction; it also examined whether the results were consistent with the Dunning−Kruger effect. A total of 977 consumers who participated in a national consumer survey were divided into four groups, based on their level of empowerment and self-assessment. The Dunning−Kruger effect was observed in the consumer empowerment results, with 35.9% of respondents showing imbalanced empowerment and self-assessment levels. A general linear model was used to exa