What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

[Cavernio]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

The quote from Dunning is different from the quote from Wikipedia. The one from Dunning implies, as I read it, that there is an intellectual barrier to ever knowing that you are bad at something. The Wikipedia quote can be construed to be saying more what I was getting at with the whole 'psychological barrier' thing, although it could also be referring to an intellectual inability.

There is nothing wrong with this idea, it IS very base. Like, the idea that someone mentally retarded may not know they're mentally retarded has existed in my mind for a long time. That I've used a fairly extreme example is purposeful on my part though, because I think that the point at which someone is that actually unable to discern their own ability is quite low. Maybe I'm wrong about this though.

The psychological barrier I'm alluding to is not due to complete and utter lack of skill, but rather a lack of ability to perceive oneself as poor at something, regardless of actual ability. This is also the same sort of thing that I feel applies to arrogance.

What I'm actually bothered by is that people are calling this effect the Kruger-Dunning effect as if to say their experiments have proven it when they haven't. Their experiments themselves are too full of holes, alternate explanations, and mangled data to prove anything. The most they do is not disprove the existence of this effect, and even that that's not even necessarily true.

And yeah, there's something else I just thought of too. If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it? If they are that terrible at it, then there's still got to be something that pushes them to thinking they're decent at it. Utter inability to not know that you're good at something wouldn't automatically mean you'll think you're at one skill level or another unless there's some sort of default that everyone possesses in terms of how they perceive themselves.
Which, I think, is more close to what I thought the KD experiments showed, they show that nearly everyone, regardless of skill level, think's they're slightly above average on any given task. That people who are really bad at the task still perceive this, showing there's a larger discrepancy between ability and perceived ability, is simply an artifact of having poor ability. There is nothing, from what I've read on a couple of their experiments, to show that a large difference in perceived ability is directly attributable to something that only exists in people who are actually bad at that task.
Again, they've clumped people into quartiles, not treating them as individuals; they've not shown any individual data for anyone. They could be hiding that there exist godawful people at a given task yet they still know they're bad at it, but they were just clumped into an average.

Also, if I were to support the level of this KD effect (I refuse to call it by those guys' names as if to support their experiments as validating the effect!!), since I believe it only affects people who are on the extreme low-end of the scale in terms of some sort of strictly defined 'inability', I would require in my experimental group people who were knowingly on the low end of the scale.

Since I don't think the Kruger Dunning experiments support the KD effect, and because I think there are multiple factors at play when a person erroneously thinks they're better at something than they are, I can't even use KD as a term for the explanation because the KD effect doesn't encompass both factors: a psychological factor based on self-preservation or somesuch, and a complete inability to know you're good at something. Also, the former seems like it still must be involved in people who have the latter, so I don't know how you would separate those 2 effects experimentally to find them without finding an ulterior measure of whatever psychological factor is at play and then run an ANCOVA or MANOVA if you found multiple other measures.

[kaiten123]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think stargroup is mostly right about Dunning-Kruger.

Caverino, I think you're reading of the Dunning-Kruger effect is off. I don't think anyone (not even Dunning and Kruger themselves) suggested it was as extreme as

an intellectual barrier to ever knowing that you are bad at something

since an exact quote from the paper: "We do not mean to imply that people are always unaware of their incompetence". makes it clear that you're misunderstanding something.
Rather, its simply that because the skills needed to be good at something are mostly the same as the skills needed to judge that thing, people who are bad at something don't have the skills to accurately judge their abilities.


They also did sub-experiments specifically to separate the effect from some other effects. So your comments there (specifically, you claim they only showed the above average effect, and that there was nothing to show it only effeted those with less skill, etc.) betray that you never read the paper or even a decent summary of it. In fact, the popular video you mentioned probably mentioned it as well if its the video I'm thinking of so it sounds like you didn't even finish that much.
While everyone initially rated themselves a little above average, there was another test where the people were allowed to see a few other people test answers before rating themselves.
So if people with less skill fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, their ratings will be unaffected since they don't have the skills to judge the tests. At the same time, the people with more skill should be able to judge other people's tests accurately against their own to see more accurately how skilled they are.
In this test, the people who did poorly still rated themselves above average, but people that were more skilled rated themselves more accurately.
There was also yet another test, where former participants were invited back for another test after minimal training and were all able to better predict their performance after the training.
The first sub-experiment rules out all effets that would affect both skilled and unskilled participants since only the unskilled failed to accurately judge, and the second rules out all effects due purely to the individuals involved since merely increasing their skills made them as good at judging their performance as the people who had high skills to begin with.
At the very least, this is perfectly consistent with the DK effect, and not easily explained otherwise. (there have been some notable attempts to pin everything on regression to the mean, task difficulty, and a few others, but they've all been debunked since like 2008)

You also seem to think DK claims to be more than it actually claims to be. They go out of their way in the paper to make it clear that the DK effect is not the only effect in play so questions like "If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it?" are adresed trivially by other well known effects such as the above average effect which you seem to already be aware of.

[stargroup100]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

honestly I think the study is ridiculous in the first place because it's so obvious

I only use the name to refer to it with fewer words

[Cavernio]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think stargroup is mostly right about Dunning-Kruger.

Caverino, I think you're reading of the Dunning-Kruger effect is off. I don't think anyone (not even Dunning and Kruger themselves) suggested it was as extreme as

since an exact quote from the paper: "We do not mean to imply that people are always unaware of their incompetence". makes it clear that you're misunderstanding something.
Rather, its simply that because the skills needed to be good at something are mostly the same as the skills needed to judge that thing, people who are bad at something don't have the skills to accurately judge their abilities.

You are misreading what I've said then, or I've not explained myself properly. Kruger Dunning has not coined this idea. I have my own idea with regards to what they say, and it differs somewhat from how they present the idea.

They also did sub-experiments specifically to separate the effect from some other effects. So your comments there (specifically, you claim they only showed the above average effect, and that there was nothing to show it only effeted those with less skill, etc.) betray that you never read the paper or even a decent summary of it. In fact, the popular video you mentioned probably mentioned it as well if its the video I'm thinking of so it sounds like you didn't even finish that much.

Just because you don't understand my position or that my position differs from the authors or yours does not mean I'm ignorant or that I've not actually read their papers.

While everyone initially rated themselves a little above average, there was another test where the people were allowed to see a few other people test answers before rating themselves.
So if people with less skill fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect, their ratings will be unaffected since they don't have the skills to judge the tests. At the same time, the people with more skill should be able to judge other people's tests accurately against their own to see more accurately how skilled they are.
In this test, the people who did poorly still rated themselves above average, but people that were more skilled rated themselves more accurately...[This] first sub-experiment rules out all effets that would affect both skilled and unskilled participants since only the unskilled failed to accurately judge,

Right, I alluded to this in my very first post regarding Dunning Kruger, and I've discussed this since then as well. This part of the experiment does not, I believe, show what people say it shows...the general ability gauge where you fit into a group, when you are directly and specifically shown that you are worse than other people in that group, is not measuring the ability that the test is measuring. It's measuring a more general ability to perceive where oneself fits in compared to others, and my theory is that it is largely irrelevant to whatever skill is being measured. The refusal to acknowledge that you are bad at something is a psychological phenomenon.
If you take my interpretation of what they tested, this part of the experiment furthermore does not separate the skilled and unskilled group as you say it does, because it itself seems like it would be a phenomenon of refusal to admit that you're actually that bad at something. Take a person who performed mid-range or higher on this test and compare them to someone who scored near the very bottom; the exact same mechanism could work in both people except that because the first person did better on the test, they still do not have to admit that they are actually bad at it. Whereas the person who is bad at it, in order to be accurate enough, would have to.
This explanation of the results of that study, I feel, makes a lot more sense than the KD is.

There was also yet another test, where former participants were invited back for another test after minimal training and were all able to better predict their performance after the training.
and the second rules out all effects due purely to the individuals involved since merely increasing their skills made them as good at judging their performance as the people who had high skills to begin with.

This does support the KD effect as far as I can tell, I don't remember it being address in the study of theirs that I read. Was it a statistically significant difference?

At the very least, this is perfectly consistent with the DK effect, and not easily explained otherwise. (there have been some notable attempts to pin everything on regression to the mean, task difficulty, and a few others, but they've all been debunked since like 2008)

Have you found something that addresses what I suggest though? I haven't, not that I spent a whole lot of time looking. Nor would I say that those studies were 'debunked'. They just also have issues with them, like KD studies do too. That's generally how good research goes, people critique the shit out of it so that eventually we'll hopefully take into account all possibilities that explain the results.
Nor, again, have I found any Kruger Dunning study that doesn't not clump people into quartiles. This is my most serious concern with their studies because ultimately, as long as they only analyze effects when they do this, I will not ever say that their studies are good support what the internet now calls the KD effect.
Like, it would be really interesting to see how those few individuals who are horrible at something and who say that they're horrible at something with relatively good accuracy, differ from those other individuals who are also bad at the given skill but who rate themselves much more favorably. Because I'm 100% positive that there exist some people in these studies who know and report that they are bad at something. I'd wager that some sort of general test that measures personality traits or emotional states, like arrogance, self-confidence, self-esteem, etc, would find a significant difference b/w these 2 groups of poorly scoring people.
Whatever factor separates these poor judges of their poor score from the good judges of their poor scores, we can then measure that factor in everyone else in the group and see if scores of that factor differ significantly for everyone else who are in the top 3 quartiles. Like, if 90% of low scorers have a lot of self-confidence, would 90% of the rest of the participants also have high self-confidence.

There's so much that I think needs to be teased apart. And my theory, again, is that the KD effect is probably only significant at the lowest end of ability on a scale.

You also seem to think DK claims to be more than it actually claims to be. They go out of their way in the paper to make it clear that the DK effect is not the only effect in play so questions like "If someone is just unable to perceive that they're bad at something, why would they therefore think they are good or decent at it at it?" are adresed trivially by other well known effects such as the above average effect which you seem to already be aware of.

I've said it twice now what I'm complaining about, and I'm not complaining at what Kruger and Dunning say in their paper(s). I'm complaining about people who perceive that the Kruger Dunning studies show strong evidence in support of what is now known as the KD effect.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

honestly I think the study is ridiculous in the first place because it's so obvious

I only use the name to refer to it with fewer words

Just to make sure you understand how the kruger dunning studies work, the measurement is not the ability to rate oneself, but on how well an individual thinks they do in comparison to everyone else. I think this is an important distinction.

[Arch0wl]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

This is different from confidence, where you don't have to advertise your strengths. You show, rather than tell. There is no expectation put on the audience -- they are free to come to their own conclusions rather than be told what to think. That annoying sense of neediness is not present.

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately. Since we've settled on bench press for an example, I'd bet that most people register 315lb and 405lb bench presses as "a lot", as some nebulously huge amount of weight in their head, even though someone who can bench 405lb is enormously more rare than someone who can bench press 315lb. (315lb is rare as it is; here's a discussion of this.) You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

[Reincarnate]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately. Since we've settled on bench press for an example, I'd bet that most people register 315lb and 405lb bench presses as "a lot", as some nebulously huge amount of weight in their head, even though someone who can bench 405lb is enormously more rare than someone who can bench press 315lb. (315lb is rare as it is; here's a discussion of this.) You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

[~kitty~]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

For some people, it would probably be an issue of acceptance or recognition. That what you accomplished actually means something. I mean, it's the same reason why people care about trophies or achievements in games that are available on your gamer profile.

[Arch0wl]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Sure -- but I suppose what I am trying to say is that a confident person would not necessarily care if the audience can't appraise his skill accurately.

I think it again calls into question why someone would need the audience to understand exactly how good he/she is in the first place.

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

[Reincarnate]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

It doesn't (necessarily). I'm defining it in the context of being labeled a braggart. Moreover, I'm trying to say that this is largely a perception issue.

For example:

Someone who just casually brings up a feat of theirs ("My personal best was about 400 pounds or so!") is not necessarily bragging. You could easily devise a number of hypothetical conversations, slip that statement in, and nobody would really get turned off by it (standalone).

What's going to get interpreted as bragging is if that self-promotion is permeating the conversation to some sufficient threshold based on the receiving audience and conversational context. If someone is constantly bragging to me about their awesome achievements, it's going to make me think "Why is this person telling me all of this? Is he trying to get me to compliment him or acknowledge that he's superior to me or something? Is he trying to make me feel worse about myself? Am I simply being used as a captive audience / narcissistic supply and nothing more?" etc.

[stargroup100]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think this places a lot of trust in audiences to know how to appraise a skill accurately... You might also expect people to estimate (based on your musculature) that you can bench a lot, but observers have no idea what that number actually is, so expecting people to guess that you can bench some vaguely large number because of some mental correlation with you being a large person is hardly an actual understanding of your skill.

What Rubix and I have been trying to tell you is that we wouldn't be talking about arrogance anymore, at least not in this context. What he meant by "needing the audience to know" is more technically equivalent to "the purpose of bragging". What does this person want to accomplish by telling people this?

Whether or not someone is arrogant or not does necessarily depend on what he says is true/demonstrable or not, but rather social context. They can believe you and understand correctly and you could still be arrogant. They can think you're lying in addition to not understanding what you actually mean and yet you could be not arrogant. These factors are [usually] independent. (You can construct situations in which the belief and its interpretation influences social perception, but in the end what matters is that percpetion.)

Rubix explained it quite well in the posts above me, better than I could have.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Arch's ideology, it appears to me, is that truth is the most important thing. To avoid talking about something, or to purposefully hide something or downplay it or whatever, means that you're hiding the truth, and it seems he has adopted the stance that hiding truth is somehow morally reprehensible. (I am unsure if this ideology is what he actually believes or if he's just trying to place context and further thinking of the last CT thread he started like a year ago, about sock-puppeting, but anyways...)

My take on this is that, again, truth is firstly, always hidden-unless it's something being thought about at that given point of time, that truth is, in a sense 'hidden'. In that way, bringing up something like your personal best bench-pressing record once is alright. But bringing it up until someone acknowledges to you 'yes, fuck, you're amazing at this' angrily, has angered someone. Someone can see a perspective or truth and not talk about it. Because, again, to constantly be reminded of one's failings causes mental health issues, is bad, etc. To be angry at people who are braggarts is probably more an innate defense mechanism that everyone has to a degree, to keep oneself emotionally/mentally in a healthy state of mind such that the person can function.
The only reason this would not be an issue is if the person is largely uninfluenced by events and people around them in the first place.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think "need" is used hyperbolically here. Why does this behavior imply need, as opposed to desire or enjoyment?

...'Need' as a word taken by itself is always hyperbolic...

[Reincarnate]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

I think this discussion is going to be difficult to have until we more clearly define certain cases.

2. Arrogance is sometimes considered having a falsely high opinion of oneself, which would suggest it's only a problem if your opinion of yourself is false.

Outlining a few scenarios here:

1. Having an opinion of yourself that is "falsely high" because the assessment of the skill is out of sync with reality (e.g. thinking you're exceptionally good at benchpressing when you may just be slightly above average).

2. Having an opinion of yourself that's "falsely high" because the assessment of self is out of sync with reality, even though the skill is assessed accurately (e.g. because you can bench 450, you think this makes you a superior person to everyone else and gives you justification to brag and/or talk down to others).

3. Having an opinion of yourself that's "falsely high" because the assessment of self is out of sync with reality, as well as the skill (e.g. because you can bench 200... etc).


Scenario 1 I would say is not arrogant by itself. Falsely assessing your own skill says nothing about how you relay or impart that perception to others.

Scenarios 2 and 3 are much more arrogant because the individual is using their perceived skill level to justify treating others like shit.

You might ask "Isn't Scenario 3 more arrogant than Scenario 2 due to the false assessment of one's own skill?" I'd say it depends on personal preference. Some people really hate being insulted by those they can't outmatch, whereas others might hate being insulted by people who are full of hot air. Depends on one's sensitivity to, say, bullying vs. bullshitting, etc. I'm not using those terms rigorously here or anything, but just giving some first-order examples to illustrate that the underlying truth of the claim is more of an "adjustment" factor rather than a root driver of arrogance-perception itself.

I think someone who is a braggart is not necessarily arrogant (although they can be). They may just be very insecure or egocentric, which is still insufferable to be around because of the neediness.

Being an arrogant braggart is an even worse combination. It's like insulting the very people you're also demanding validation from.

[Arch0wl]

Re: What is arrogance/humility, what is bragging, is it bad, and why?

Thanks for the distinctions, Rubix. I think you could be clearer about general superiority vs. domain-specific superiority, but that's more of a side-discussion although I'd be interested in pursuing it in you are. By domain-specific superiority: someone who bench presses 405 is superior to someone who benches 315 in benching, and may indirectly be superior in other strength-related things depending on how this ability transfers, but would not be superior to someone at, say, chess for this ability because they're completely unconnected.

Of course, the possibility of someone being generally superior to another person seems either impossible or very much possible depending on how you're defining hierarchies of things. I'm sure someone exists who tops percentile rankings in nearly everything most people care about (or the top things that lots of people value), but you could say that this person still wouldn't be superior to anyone because they aren't superior in every domain ever, nevermind that some domains allow for intersubjective superiority but are ultimately subjective (i.e. you can be "more attractive" in the sense that you are most attractive to the largest number of people, but ultimately some people just won't find you attractive) and some are purely subjective period, i.e. your skill at "being a good boyfriend/girlfriend" is completely dependent on what your partner thinks this means.

I've never heard anyone actually consider this question ("what would a general superiority even be / what would it mean to be superior to someone else anyway?") beyond a very shallow examination of it ("duh some people are obviously better" / "no one is better than anyone else"), so if you have any thoughts on it I'd like to hear them. It's by default an emotional topic because to say that some people are better than others (or are not, but this happens much more on the 'are' side) provokes readers into thinking the person saying this thinks themselves superior in this way, and that they're arguing it out of self-interest. That is an ad hominem circumstantial argument, but it's practically built into the discussion.

My take on this is that, again, truth is firstly, always hidden-unless it's something being thought about at that given point of time, that truth is, in a sense 'hidden'. In that way, bringing up something like your personal best bench-pressing record once is alright.

This is really a side discussion, but I'm not sure how this would account for things like external reality and so on. Logical truths (i.e. in mathematics or various systems of logic) are true but based on reasons that can be verified independent of one person's considerations of those things.