(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

[redbird]

Broadly speaking, no—the difference that occurs to me is that people who think of driving or engineering or cooking as skillsets might not think of social skills that way. I wonder if that effect also applies to things like people assuming they are more dextrous or attractive or socially smooth than they are.

[randomness]

Well, it sure seems to be true right about now. I'm encountering people who think they're smooth who are being jerks, and people who are quite insecure about their presentation who are sweet people.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*nod* Some of th most clueless people I've known have gone on and on about how good they are at understanding others… which is a good thing for me to remember as I work at not joining their number.

[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.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Some of th most clueless people I've known have gone on and on about how good they are at understanding others…

That was the characteristic that made me think of this in the first place, in fact!

which is a good thing for me to remember as I work at not joining their number.

You're thinking about that, which is a good sign. :)

[rmd.livejournal.com]

One of the weird things to come out of me businessy leadership class is that I seem to be better at soft-skills than I thought.

Or rather the folks running the class and my peers claim my soft skills are better than I think they are.

[muffyjo]

You are AMAZING at soft skills. You have a double punch of humor and practicality which takes egos out of the way and helps people to laugh at themselves and work together.

Just in case you wanted my completely not-asked for opinion.

[muffyjo]

Thank you for the link. It's not something I was familiar with and I love that it has been so nicely defined.