Background of the study

The Application of Dunning-Kruger Effect to Student’s Self-Efficacy
Chapter 1
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Introduction
People grow up in a highly competitive environment -- in school, at work, politics etc. Everyone is striving to make it to the top or to be the best. But for some, a false humility develop and often masking themselves in a poor self-image. Competition occurs everywhere and this is one of the reasons why people were born competitive. Just like what Thomas Jefferson once said, “He who knows best, best knows how little he knows”. Incompetent individuals have more difficulty recognizing their true level of ability than do more competent individuals and that a lack of metacognitive skills may underlie this deficiency.
Dunning-Kruger Effect and Self-Efficacy as the researchers’ variables are perhaps one of the topics in the field of research in psychology. These two variables can give some insights on how an individual seem to be so imperfect in appraising themselves and their abilities. As people continue living in the society, people tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social as well as intellectual domains. This leads the researchers to their second variable that is self-efficacy. The researchers’ decided to pair these two variables because they are greatly connected to each other. Self-efficacy is the extent or strength of one’s belief in one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach goals. Completing tasks and reaching these goals measures one’s competencies.
Dunning-Kruger Effect is a phenomenon observed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will fail to recognize their own lack of skill, fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy, fail to accurately gauge skill in others and recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill. (Wikipedia)
Self-efficacy affects every area of human endeavor. By determining the beliefs a person holds regarding his power to affect situations, it strongly influences both the power a person actually has to face challenges completely and the choices a person is most likely to make. Self-efficacy is one’s beliefin one’s ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task (Bandura, social cognitive theory).
The researchers believe that just like what Richard Nisbett said to the great giant of psychology, Amos Tversky, “The quicker you realize that Amos is smarter than you, the smarter you yourself must be” (R.E. Nisbett, 1998). We are to be reminded of the paradox, once incompetent individuals gained the metacognitive skills in order to recognize their own incompetence, they were no longer incompetent.
Furthermore, the researchers assumed that the importance of this study is to determine how incompetent individuals, adopt to achieve success and satisfaction even if they suffer a dual burden (Dunning, Kruger, 1999). This also gives an idea that one of the essential features of incompetence is when a person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent (Miller, 1993). Through the help of this study, the researchers are hoping that it can give the readers an idea or overview on how incompetence affect one’s self-efficacy.