“The phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.” Dunning-Kruger_effect

Manifestations include:

1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
4. if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

David Dunning of Cornell University and Justin Kruger of the University of Illinois, won the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize for PSYCHOLOGY for their modest report, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” [Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, December 1999, pp. 1121-34.] http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf