Mental Health

Most People Overestimate Their Abilities

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Mar 17, 2014 07:17 PM EDT

Can't stand your "know-it-all" colleague? Have no fear. New research reveals that most people perceive their own talents and accomplishments as better than actual performance. 

The latest study on self-evaluation reveals that people rate their performance as significantly higher than their actual performance.

Researcher Ethan Zell and Zlatan Krizan wanted to see how accurately people rate themselves on a variety of tasks, and whether the type of task and measure of performance affected self-evaluation accuracy.

Participants had had evaluate themselves on a particular type of skill such as academic, athletic or non-verbal skills, according to the Daily Mail.

The findings revealed that people were most confident about their language, academic and professional skills. Researchers believe this is because they get most feedback in these areas.

However, people were least accurate in assessing their non-verbal skills. Researchers said this might be because they don't often receive feedback on nonverbal skills, which could well lead them to form unrealistic and exaggerated perceptions of their own abilities.

The findings also revealed that people were more likely to rate themselves more highly on simple tasks, and when they had more experience on tasks they were asked to do.

Researchers said the latest findings help provide insight into developing interventions that will improve the accuracy of people's self-evaluations, which could lead to more realistic and less egocentric professional environments.

The findings are published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

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