David Dunning
At its most general, my research focuses on accuracy and illusion in human judgment. In my social psychological work, I am interested in how, and when, people's perceptions of themselves and their surrounding differ from an objectively definable reality. In my psycholegal work, I concentrate on accuracy and error in eyewitness testimony.
My social psychological work focuses on two related phenomena concerning self and social judgment. First, I am interested in why people tend to have overly favorable and objectively indefensible views of their own abilities. For example, a full 94% of college professors say they do "above average" work, although it is impossible for nearly everyone to be above average. Second, I am interested in why people use themselves as the "model of excellence" in judgments of other people. For example, ask people what it takes to be an "effective leader," and they tend to describe someone who resembles themselves. Task-oriented people (e.g., they describe themselves as persistent, ambitious) tend to cite task-skills as important in leadership. People-oriented individuals (e.g., they describe themselves as friendly and tactful) tend to emphasize social skills in their definition of the effective leader. In past work, I have found that the second phenomenon (using the self as model of excellence) produces the first phenomenon described above (too many people describe themselves as above average). I have also found that using the self as the model of excellence in judging others leads to many disagreements in social judgment. In current work, I am focusing on why people tend to define excellence so egocentrically. But, more importantly, I am looking for circumstances in which people will stop using themselves as the standard of judgment.
My work in eyewitness testimony is a search for something, anything that might help people to distinguish accurate eyewitnesses from erroneous ones. In recently published work, we focus on witnesses making identifications of a perpetrator from a line-up. We found that asking witnesses how they reached their identifications went a good way toward telling whether they had made an accurate ones. Accurate witnesses tended to have difficulty providing a description of how they had reached their decisions (e.g., "I don't know why, I just recognized him."). Inaccurate witnesses tended to have long-winded explanations focusing on process of elimination (e.g., I compared the photos to each other in order to narrow the choices."). In more recent work, we are trying to extend this research by refining these measures, to find more valid and reliable measures of eyewitness accuracy and error.
Primary Interests:
- Causal Attribution
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Law and Public Policy
- Person Perception
- Self and Identity
Research Group or Laboratory:
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Video Gallery
Why Incompetent People Think They're Amazing (TED talk)
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Why Incompetent People Think They're Amazing (TED talk)
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Why Ignorance Fails to Recognize Itself
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Cognitive Habits of Intellectual Arrogance and Humility
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The Long and Winding Road to Knowing Thyself
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We Are All Flawed Intellects, So How Can We Judge the Expertise of Self and Others?
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On Gender Attitudes and Stereotypes
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Hypocognition: Making Sense of the Landscape Beyond One's Conceptual Reach
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Why You Think You Are More Competent Than You Are
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Gullible to Ourselves
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Responding to Five Questions About the World After COVID
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Knowing Your Circle of Competence
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The Dunning Kruger Effect
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The Human Psyche and Trust
Books:
- Alicke, M. D., Dunning, D. A., & Krueger, J. I. (Eds.). (2005). The self in social judgment. New York: Psychology Press.
- Dunning, D. (2005). Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. New York: Psychology Press.
Journal Articles:
- Balcetis, E., Dunning, D., & Miller, R. L. (2008). Do collectivists know themselves better than individualists? Cross-cultural studies of the holier than thou phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1252-1267.
- Critcher, C. R., & Dunning, D. (2009). Egocentric pattern projection: How implicit personality theories recapitulate the geography of the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 1-16.
- Dunning, D., & Cohen, G. L. (1992). Egocentric definitions of traits and abilities in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 341-355.
- Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. (2004). Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 69-106.
- Dunning, D., & Leuenberger, A., & Sherman, D. A. (in press). A new look at motivated inference: Are self-serving theories of success a product of motivational forces? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Dunning, D., & McElwee, R. O. (1995). Idiosyncratic trait definitions: Implications for self-description and social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 936-946.
- Dunning, D., Meyerowitz, J. A., & Holzberg, A. D. (1989). Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic trait definitions in self-serving assessments of ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1082-1090.
- Dunning, D., Perie, M., & Story, A. L. (1991). Self-serving prototypes of social categories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 957-968.
- Dunning, D., & Stern, L. B. (1994). Distinguishing accurate from inaccurate eyewitness identifications via inquiries about decision processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 818-835.
- Dunning, D., & Story, A. L. (1991). Depression, realism, and the overconfidence effect: Are the sadder wiser when predicting future actions and events? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 521-532.
- Ehrlinger, J., & Dunning, D. (2003). How chronic self-views influence (and potentially mislead) estimates of performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 5-17.
- Ross, D. F., Ceci, S. J., Dunning, D., & Toglia, M. P. (1994). Unconscious transference and mistaken identity: When a witness misidentifies a familiar but innocent person. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 918-930.
Other Publications:
- Dunning, D. (1993). Words to live by: The self and definitions of social concepts and categories. In J. Suls (Ed.), Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 4, pp. 99-126). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Courses Taught:
- Cognitive Social Psychology
- Psychology and Law
- Research Methods in Psychology
- The Self
David Dunning
Department of Psychology
University of Michigan
530 Church Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
United States of America
- Phone: (734) 763-0063