So What Do the Top 5% Think of Themselves?
Recently I commented on a piece at smartplanet.com that talked about how 40% of us think we're in the top 5%. But what about that top 5%? What do they think? According to a new article at smartplanet.com, the same researcher who gave us the 40% number now says that those people don't think they're very smart at all. Say what? Cornell University psychology professor David Dunning says, "By far it is more common to find people overestimating rather than underestimating themselves, but a minority of the time it is certainly possible for people to slip into perceptions of 'impostorship.' They do so mostly for the same reasons that people overestimate: Life provides no answer sheets objectively telling people how well they are doing. They have to infer it, and they can make mistakes." Writes Alyson Windsor, "I found this article fascinating because many of my smart and successful friends and colleagues seem to have the opposite problem. The...