I used to think that cold logic was what defined me or rather was an ability I could call upon and that I was given a gift of competence over confidence. Lately I've come across people who grossly overestimate their own abilities/competence/intellect and are unable to realise it. Even if I did fit into this category I would never realise it. Now it's made me depressed to think that the inside voice which I've come to love so much may just be a dull, pretentious twat; which is beginning to sound more and more possible. What am I supposed to do now :S
One of the key points of the study was that competence in something, as well as the ability to recognize and learn from other's competence - was a hallmark of possessing the meta-cognitive ability to accurately identify your own competence.
Basically competence begets competence, or vice-versa.
The incompetent are unaware of their own incompetence, whereas the competent are unaware of the incompetence of others, partly because of their own bias.
If someone has outstanding grammar, they generally overestimate the grammatical abilities of others. Someone who has poor grammar, not only has poor grammar, but they lack the ability to identify poor grammar in others, so they can't tell whether a paragraph was written by someone skilled or unskilled.
In this, they then grossly overestimate their ability relative to others.
I think that the best way to identify whether your estimates are correct or not, is to assess how you learn from others. Do you often identify competency in others and then apply those techniques to improve your own?
There's also a grey area in activities requiring emotional, intellectual and physical competence. Coaches for example, most likely possess the intellectual competency to be great basketball players - they don't necessarily have the physical or emotional capability to play well or perform physically under pressure.
