(no subject)

[randomness]

There's pretty clearly some corollary of the Dunning-Kruger effect that applies to annoying, irritating, or otherwise unpleasant people.

(Obviously some of the people in those categories are consciously being jerks. On the other hand, there's no reason to think the effect has an exception for social skills.)

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

"You're wrong! I'm very interesting!" Funny, I thought people got to decide their interest level for themselves.

To be fair, I'm guessing that person was deciding their interest level for themselves. They just had a problem understanding anyone else might have a different interest level than theirs. :)

I wonder if entitlement is a common factor.

Almost certainly. Entitlement generally makes it more possible for people to ignore the opinions of other people, which tends to reduce their self-awareness. The flip side is also true: people who are not members of an entitled group tend to be forced to see things through the eyes of the entitled group.

It's probably not a coincidence that many of the people I'm thinking of who have had to hone social skills and at the same time lack self-confidence about those skills are women. And probably not a coincidence that the annoying blowhards with delusions of adequacy are disproportionately men.

This isn't always true, but the correlation is pretty striking.