An Investigation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in First-Year College Students During Distance Education

https://doi.org/10.9743/JEO.2023.20.4.7

Abstract

The Dunning–Kruger effect refers to low performing individuals’ tendency to overestimate their performance. The metacognitive deficit is thought to be responsible for this inflated self-assessment observed among the low performers. The present study investigated whether the Dunning–Kruger effect occurs in college students during online distance education. A total of 41 college students enrolled in a Learning Psychology course took four online multiple-choice tests immediately following 1-hour online Learning Psychology courses. After each exam, participants estimated their grade points and also rated confidence in their grade point estimations. We performed a series of independent sample t-tests after we had grouped the students as higher and lower performers based on a median split of the actual exam grade points. The analysis demonstrated that lower performing students’ deviation of self-estimated grade points from real grade points was significantly greater than higher performing students. Confidence in grade point estimation did not differ between high performers and low performers. Overall, the results indicated that lower performing students overestimated their grade points by an average of 13.5%. On the other hand, lower performing students were as confident in their grade point prediction as higher performing students.

Keywords: Dunning-Kruger effect, metacognition, academic success, self-estimation