Social Science Space

Social psychologists David Dunning of the University of Michigan and Justin Kruger of New York University, whose research captured the public imagination by suggesting that unskilled people often overrate their own abilities, have received the 2023 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Psychology.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, explains David Dunning, comes when “people who are incompetent or unskilled or not expert in a field lack expertise to recognize that they lack expertise. So they come to conclusions, decisions, opinions that they think are just fine when they’re, well, wrong.”

The author’s research shows that many Americans think they know much more about politics than they really do.