In 1999, psychologist David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger published a paper in which they described in detail a phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect. There are several possible reasons effect. Firstly, no one wants to consider themselves below average; such people tend to overestimate their self-esteem. Secondly, some individuals find it easier to recognize ignorance in others than in themselves, and this creates the illusion that they are above average, even if they are in an equivalent position.

Dunning-Kruger effect: definition

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from an illusion of superiority. Scientifically, this effect describes a person's metacognitive inability to recognize their own limits. The opposite effect occurs when a highly qualified person thinks that he is not good enough.

This effect was discovered by two psychologists from Cornell University in 1999 thanks to a strange and very funny misunderstanding. One day, a man decided to rob a bank using lemon juice to hide his face. He firmly believed that a mask of lemon juice on his face would act like invisible ink. It is not difficult to imagine that his idea was not successful, and the man was arrested.

From what happened, psychologists concluded that people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect have the following symptoms:

• do not admit their lack of qualifications;
• do not recognize true mastery in others;
• do not recognize the finitude of their inadequacy;
• have unlimited self-confidence.

The essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect

Dunning points out that the ignorant mind is a vessel filled with inauthentic life experience, random theories, facts, strategies, algorithms and guesses, which, unfortunately, allow you to consider yourself useful and possessing accurate knowledge. The Dunning-Kruger effect is that ignorance carries with it the inability to accurately assess one's own ignorance.

When a person tries to comprehend this world in which he exists with his knowledge and paradigms, he formulates ideas, and then begins to systematically seek out information that confirms these ideas. It is human nature to interpret one's ambiguous experiences according to one's personal theories.

What is the Dunning-Kruger effect: ignorance more often gives rise to confidence than knowledge, resulting in false knowledge. And if you make an attempt to convince such people, you may encounter their distrust or even a hostile attitude.

A curious phenomenon in psychology

The Dunning-Kruger effect is not just a curious psychological phenomenon, it affects important aspect in the mode of human thought, a major flaw in human thinking. This applies to absolutely everyone - all people are competent in certain areas of knowledge, and at the same time they do not understand anything in other areas of life. If you look closely at the Dunning-Kruger curve, you will recognize that many people imagine themselves in the top half of the curve, and it is an act of intelligence to recognize that everyone is in the bottom half.

This pattern, however, is not the default mode, it is not fate or a sentence. The Dunning-Kruger effect and metacognition, which is part of skeptical philosophy, as well as the presence critical thinking are a recognition that the individual has a powerful and at the same time subtle perception. You need to not only acknowledge this, but also periodically make a conscious effort to combat yourself. A big part of the journey is systematic self-doubt. At the same time, you need to understand that this is, in fact, an endless process.

Dunning-Kruger Effect: Cognitive Distortion and Self-Esteem

In addition to various aspects critical thinking, adequate self-esteem is a skill that one should strive to develop specifically. Typically, a person does not evaluate another person's competence higher than it actually is, while literate people evaluate their own competence at a level lower.

Experiments and research in this area are aimed at solving cognitive problems, including logic, grammar, and humor. Interestingly, with a self-rated IQ below average, people overestimate their knowledge and abilities, and those with above average levels prefer to underestimate themselves. This is a true cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Problems of metacognition

The trouble with this world is that stupid people are always confident, but smart people are full of doubts (Bertrand Russell). Anyone who tries to overestimate their qualifications lacks the metacognition to recognize their mistakes. In other words, they are too incompetent to admit their own incompetence. Improving their metacognitive skills would allow them to correctly assess their own cognitive abilities.

If we consider the Dunning-Kruger effect in more detail, the connection between insufficient awareness and deficits in metacognitive skills is important. The findings presented by Krueger and Dunning are often interpreted to suggest that less competent people perceive themselves to be more competent. Some consider themselves God's gift and at the same time are quite mediocre, others are more than competent, and at the same time often demonstrate excessive modesty.

Criticism: regression to the mean

The most common criticism of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that it simply reflects regression to the statistical mean. Regression to the mean refers to the fact that any time you select a group of individuals based on some criterion and then measure their condition on another dimension, the level of performance will tend to shift towards the mean level.

In the context of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the argument is that incompetent people exhibit movement toward the mean when asked to evaluate their own performance, that is, they have relatively uncritical perceptions of their performance. When a task is difficult, most people assume that they will do worse than other people. Conversely, when a task is relatively simple, most people assume that they would do it better than others.

We perceive the world sense organs. Everything we see, hear and somehow feel enters our brain as a stream of data. The brain evaluates the data, and based on it we make a decision. This decision determines our next actions.

If the thermal receptors in the mouth send us a signal that we are drinking boiling water, we will spit it out. When we sense that someone is about to harm us, we prepare to defend ourselves. When, while driving, we see that the brake lights of the car driving in front of us light up, our foot will instantly move from the gas pedal to the brake pedal.

The rules by which our brain makes decisions are called mental models. Mental models are ideas stored in our brain about how the world around us works.

For each of our mental models, it is necessary to determine how well it corresponds to reality. We can denote this correspondence as objectivity. The idea that by giving up a serving of ice cream we will solve the problem of hunger in Africa obviously has a very low degree of objectivity, but the likelihood that a person will die by shooting himself in the head is very high, that is, it has highly objectivity.

However, our brains have a tendency to succumb to what is called Dunning-Kruger effect. This means that there are mental models in our heads that we sincerely believe in, even if they do not correspond to reality. In other words, our subjective ideas sometimes replace objective reality for us. Recent studies have shown that some of our subjective ideas about the structure of the world caused the same confidence as an objective fact like: 2 + 2 = 4, however, even with absolute confidence, our brain is often mistaken.

A certain MacArthur Wheeler from Pittsburgh robbed two banks in broad daylight without any disguise. Security cameras captured Wheeler's face, allowing police to quickly apprehend him. The criminal was shocked by his arrest. After his arrest, looking around in disbelief, he said: “I smeared juice on my face.”

Thief Wheeler was convinced that by smearing his face (including his eyes) with lemon juice, he would become invisible to video cameras. He believed it so much that, having smeared himself with juice, he went to rob banks without fear. What is an absolutely absurd model for us is an irrefutable truth for him. Wheeler gave absolutely subjective confidence to his biased model. He was subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Wheeler's "Lemon Thief" inspired researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger to take a closer look at the phenomenon. Researchers were interested in the difference between a person's actual abilities and his perception of these abilities. They formulated the hypothesis that a person with insufficient ability suffers from two types of difficulties:

• due to his inability, accepts wrong decisions(for example, after smearing himself with lemon juice, he goes to rob banks);
• He unable to comprehend, that he made the wrong decision (Wheeler was not convinced of his inability to be “invisible” even by the video camera recordings, which he called falsified).

The researchers tested the reliability of these hypotheses on an experimental group of people who first completed a test measuring their abilities in a certain area (logical thinking, grammar or sense of humor), then had to guess their level of knowledge and skills in this area.

The study found two interesting trends:

• Least capable people(in the study referred to as incompetent) tended their abilities significantly overestimate. In addition, the worse their abilities were, the more they rated themselves. For example, the more insufferable a person was, the more funny he thought he was. This fact had already been clearly formulated by Charles Darwin: “Ignorance more often gives rise to confidence than knowledge”;
• The most capable (designated as competent) tended their abilities underestimate. This is explained by the fact that if a task seems simple to a person, then he gets the feeling that this task will be simple for everyone else.

In the second part of the experiment, the subjects had the opportunity to study the test results of the other participants, followed by repeated self-assessment.

Competente Compared to the others, they realized that they were better than they expected. Therefore, they adjusted their self-esteem and began to evaluate themselves more objectively.

Incompetente After contact with reality, they did not change their biased self-assessment. They were unable to recognize that others' abilities were better than their own. As Forrest Gump said, “Every fool is a fool.”

1 Main character the novel of the same name by Winston Groom and the film by Robert Zemeckis, a person with mental retardation. - Note lane.

The conclusion of the study is this: people who don't know don't know (don't realize) that they don't know. The incompetent tend to significantly overestimate their own abilities, they fail to recognize the abilities of others, and when confronted with reality they do not change their assessment. For simplicity, about people suffering from this problem, we will say that they have Dunning-Kruger(abbreviated as D–K). Research has shown that people come to biased and erroneous conclusions, but their bias prevents them from understanding and admitting it.

DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT:

THE RESEARCH SHOWED TWO MAIN TRENDS:

I. COMPETENTE HAVE A TENDENCY TO UNDERESTIMATE THEMSELVES

II. INCOMPETENTTHEY HAVE A TENDENCY TO OVEREVALUATE THEMSELVES.

The brain protects us with sweet ignorance

The fact that in the case of the Dunning-Kruger effect one could talk about some kind of protective reaction of the human brain confirms a condition called anosognosia 1 . Let's give an example: a patient who has lost one of his limbs and suffers from anosognosia thinks that he still has this limb, and it is impossible to explain to him otherwise. When the doctor talks to the patient about his good left arm, the patient communicates normally. But as soon as it comes to right hand, which he does not have, the patient pretends not to hear. Monitoring of brain activity showed that the patient does this unconsciously, his damaged brain blocks information indicating its own deficiency at a subconscious level. There were even cases recorded when it was impossible to explain to a blind person that he was blind. This extreme case of anosognosia supports the theory that our brains are capable of ignoring information that indicates we are incompetent.

Sometimes, as in the case of anosognosia, our brain reacts to information that indicates the error of our mental models by simply ignoring it. Keeps us in a state of bias and sweet ignorance. What risk does this pose? Why should we strive for objectivity?

1 Anosognosia- lack of critical assessment by the patient of his defect or disease. Observed mainly in cases of damage right parietal lobe of the brain, in some cases may indicate severe mental disorder with a violation of criticism, in others - on the patient’s personality or on the fact that he uses mechanisms psychological protection. - Note edit.

It was first described in 1999 by social psychologists David Dunning (University of Michigan) and Justin Kruger (New York University). The effect "suggests that we are not very good at accurately assessing ourselves." The video lecture below, written by Dunning, is a sobering reminder of man's tendency to deceive himself. "We often overestimate our abilities, resulting in a widespread "illusory superiority" that forces " incompetent people think they're amazing." The effect is greatly enhanced at the lower end of the scale; “those with the least ability are most likely to overestimate their skills in to the greatest extent" Or, as they say, some people are so stupid that they have no idea about their stupidity.

Combine this with the opposite effect—the tendency of qualified people to undervalue themselves—and the stage is set for an epidemiological spread of mismatches in skill sets and job titles. But while "imposter syndrome" can lead to tragic personal outcomes and rob the world of talent, the worst effects of the Dunning-Kruger effect negatively impact us all.

While inflated egos play a role in promoting delusions of competence, Dunning and Kruger found that most of us are susceptible to this effect in some area of ​​our lives simply because we lack the skills to understand how bad we are at some things. We don’t know the rules well enough to break them with success and creativity. Until we have a basic understanding of what constitutes competence in a particular task, we may not even realize that we are failing.

Highly motivated, low-skilled people are the biggest problem in any industry. No wonder Albert Einstein said: “The real crisis is a crisis of incompetence.” But why don’t people realize their incompetence and where does confidence in their own expertise come from?

David Dunning's animated TED-Ed talk explains the famous "Dunning-Kruger effect", the reasons for illusory superiority and misunderstanding of one's skill level.

Although Justin Kruger and David Dunning put forward this phenomenon in 1999, they noted that historical background This principle can be traced in the sayings of Lao Tzu, Confucius, Socrates and other philosophers.

Below the video is a transcript of the lecture.

“Are you as good at some things as you think you are? How skilled are you at managing your finances? What about reading other people's emotions? How healthy are you compared to people you know? Is your grammar above average?

Understanding how competent and professional we are compared to other people not only improves self-esteem. It helps us understand when we can move forward by relying on our own decisions and instincts, and when we need to seek outside advice.

However psychological research show that we are not that good at accurately assessing ourselves. In fact, we often overestimate our own abilities. Researchers have a special name for this phenomenon: the Dunning-Kruger effect. It explains why more than 100 studies have shown that people demonstrate illusory superiority.

We consider ourselves better than others to the point that we violate the laws of mathematics. When software engineers at two companies were asked to rate their productivity, 32% at one company and 42% at the other placed themselves in the top 5%.

According to another study, 88% of American drivers consider their driving skills to be above average. And these are not isolated findings. On average, people tend to rate themselves better than most in different areas, ranging from health, leadership skills, ethics and more.

What's particularly interesting is that those with the least ability tend to overestimate their skills the most. People with noticeable gaps in logical reasoning, grammar, financial literacy, mathematics, emotional intelligence, conducting medical laboratory tests and chess - all tend to rate their competence at almost the level of true experts.

Who is most susceptible to such misconceptions? Unfortunately, we all do, because we all have pockets of incompetence that we don’t acknowledge. But why?

In 1999, when psychologists Dunning and Kruger first described this phenomenon, they argued that people who lack knowledge and skills in specific areas suffer from a double curse. First, they make mistakes and bad decisions. And secondly, the same gaps in knowledge prevent them from catching their mistakes. In other words, bad performers lack the real competence needed to recognize how poorly they are doing.

For example, when researchers studied participants in a college debate tournament, the bottom 25 percent of teams in the preliminary rounds lost nearly four out of every five contests. But they thought they won almost 60%. Without a sufficient understanding of the rules of debate, students simply could not understand when or how often their arguments fell apart.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is not a matter of the ego blinding us to our shortcomings. People usually admit their shortcomings as soon as they are able to detect them. In one study, students who initially performed poorly on a logic quiz and then took a mini-course on logic were quite willing to label their initial performance as terrible.

This may be why people with moderate experience or competence often have less confidence in their abilities. They know enough to realize that there is a lot they don't know. Meanwhile, experts are usually aware of how knowledgeable they are, but they often make another mistake: they assume that everyone else is also knowledgeable. As a result, people, whether highly skilled or incompetent, often fall into the trap of inaccurate self-perception. With low qualifications they cannot see own mistakes. And when they are exceptionally competent, they do not realize how unusual their skills are.

So, if the Dunning-Kruger effect is invisible to those who experience it, what can we do to understand how good we really are at different things? First, ask other people and think about what they say, even if it is unpleasant. Secondly, and this is much more important, keep learning. The more knowledgeable we become, the less likely it is that holes will remain in our competence. Perhaps it all comes down to the old adage: "When you argue with a fool, first make sure he doesn't do the same thing."

Patrick works as a programmer at large company on software development. IN best case scenario he can be called an average employee: the program he works on is in complete disarray, he does not meet deadlines, and after a couple of months he does not remember the code of the program he developed.

But the fact that Patrick is not very good at writing programs is not his most unpleasant trait. What irritates his manager most is Patrick's complete conviction that he is a great programmer. Last month he received a less than flattering written review of his performance from a senior manager and was very indignant:

“I’m the best programmer in this department! You have a very strange rating system if you rate someone with my talent so low. This scale does not accurately reflect my abilities. Maybe she is, of course, evaluating something, but definitely not programming skills!”

If you have ever met someone who is absolutely sure that their job was done perfectly, even though it was actually a failure, then most likely you have observed the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

The name of this phenomenon was proposed by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger to describe a cognitive distortion in which people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. In addition to this cognitive distortion, they are completely convinced that they are, in fact, quite competent.

Patrick's programming skills needed improvement. If he could understand this, he would take up his own development. He would take constructive criticism well, and it would be much easier to communicate with him.

Unfortunately, the results of the online survey “How do you respond to constructive criticism?” show that only 39% of employees are able to respond normally and take targeted action to fix what needs fixing. They do not react to criticism with aggression or withdrawal, but try to understand and correct their mistakes. What happens to the remaining 61%? Most likely, not all of them fully correspond to the description of the Dunning-Kruger effect, but many react to a fair remark addressed to them in much the same way as Patrick.

The irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that “the knowledge and skills needed to cope with a task are usually also needed to understand one’s shortcomings and mistakes.” If a person does not have enough intelligence to cope with a particular task, then this deficiency will not allow him to understand his own mistakes.

A 1999 study describing the Dunning-Kruger effect was titled: “I can’t and I don’t know that I can’t. How a lack of understanding of one’s own incompetence leads to inflated self-esteem.” In the study, Professor Dunning and his team gave college students problems on grammar, logic, and exercises to assess their sense of humor. They noticed that participants who scored the lowest tended to significantly overestimate their abilities. For example, after taking a grammar test, students were asked to rate their ability to use correct grammatical forms. As you might guess, those with the lowest scores on the test rated their abilities the highest. Participants in the lowest 10% scored 67% on average. Only a third of the participants achieved this result.

The Dunning-Kruger effect can be traced not only through the example of students. According to another study, 32-42% of programmers rated their abilities as the highest in their company. In their opinion, only 5% of employees had the same high performance as them. According to statistics, 21% of Americans believe that the prospect of becoming a millionaire in the next 10 years is quite realistic. Drivers very often rate their driving skills as very high. 68% of University of Nebraska faculty ranked themselves in the top 25% of teachers.

Professor Dunning, who now teaches at the University of Michigan, says a major problem in many organizations is that employees underperform simply because they don't know what it's like to perform better or what good results look like. Employees don't necessarily always become defensive; sometimes they simply lack knowledge. Dunning reports that after learning about their poor results, most students agreed that they lacked knowledge and were willing to fill the gaps.

The Dunning–Kruger effect also applies to high-ability employees. Less than 50% of the 30,000 employees surveyed said they were good at their jobs. Only 29% of them responded that their effectiveness was satisfactory. 36% reported that they are never or almost never satisfied with their jobs. Dunning and Krueger concluded that the more competent an employee, the higher his dissatisfaction with his job. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that high intelligence, which allows effective employees to do quality work, helps them find mistakes and understand their own limitations, which leads to dissatisfaction with themselves.

Original article: Mark Murphy, — The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows Why Some People Think They’re Great Even When Their Work Is Terrible, Forbes, January, 2017

Translation: Eliseeva Margarita Igorevna

Editor: Simonov Vyacheslav Mikhailovich

Key words: business, work, psychology, work psychology, coach, coaching, career, success

Dunning-Kruger effect January 21st, 2016

In general this is in simple words about the obvious, but still. In simple terms, it can be formulated something like this: a stupid person makes mistakes, but cannot realize his mistake due to his own stupidity.

This is a simplified interpretation of the cognitive bias that Justin Kruger and David Dunning described in 1999. The full statement is: “People with low skill levels make erroneous conclusions and bad decisions, but are unable to recognize their mistakes due to their low skill level.”

Failure to understand mistakes leads to conviction that one is right, and, consequently, to increased self-confidence and awareness of one’s superiority. Thus, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological paradox that we all often encounter in life: less competent people consider themselves professionals, while more competent people tend to doubt themselves and their abilities.

Dunning and Kruger called the starting point of their research famous sayings Charles Darwin:

“Ignorance more often breeds confidence than knowledge”

and Bertrand Russell:

“One of the unpleasant features of our times is that those who have confidence are stupid, and those who have any imagination and understanding are filled with doubts and indecision.”

And now it’s a little more complicated, but in more detail...

We perceive the world around us through our senses. Everything we see, hear and somehow feel enters our brain as a stream of data. The brain evaluates the data, and based on it we make a decision. This decision determines our next actions.

If the thermal receptors in the mouth send us a signal that we are drinking boiling water, we will spit it out. When we sense that someone is about to harm us, we prepare to defend ourselves. When, while driving, we see that the brake lights of the car driving in front of us light up, our foot will instantly move from the gas pedal to the brake pedal.

The rules by which our brain makes decisions are called mental models. Mental models are ideas stored in our brain about how the world around us works.

For each of our mental models, it is necessary to determine how well it corresponds to reality. We can denote this correspondence as objectivity. The idea that by giving up an ice cream we will solve the problem of hunger in Africa obviously has a very low degree of objectivity, but the probability that a person will die by shooting himself in the head is very high, that is, it has a high degree of objectivity .

However, our brains have a tendency to succumb to what is called Dunning-Kruger effect. This means that there are mental models in our heads that we sincerely believe in, even if they do not correspond to reality. In other words, our subjective ideas sometimes replace objective reality for us. Recent studies have shown that some of our subjective ideas about the structure of the world caused the same confidence as an objective fact like: 2 + 2 = 4, however, even with absolute confidence, our brain is often mistaken.

A certain MacArthur Wheeler from Pittsburgh robbed two banks in broad daylight without any disguise. Security cameras captured Wheeler's face, allowing police to quickly apprehend him. The criminal was shocked by his arrest. After his arrest, looking around in disbelief, he said: “I smeared juice on my face.”

Thief Wheeler was convinced that by smearing his face (including his eyes) with lemon juice, he would become invisible to video cameras. He believed it so much that, having smeared himself with juice, he went to rob banks without fear. What is an absolutely absurd model for us is an irrefutable truth for him. Wheeler gave absolutely subjective confidence to his biased model. He was subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Wheeler's "Lemon Thief" inspired researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger to take a closer look at the phenomenon. Researchers were interested in the difference between a person's actual abilities and his perception of these abilities. They formulated the hypothesis that a person with insufficient ability suffers from two types of difficulties:

• due to his inability, accepts wrong decisions(for example, after smearing himself with lemon juice, he goes to rob banks);
• He unable to comprehend, that he made the wrong decision (Wheeler was not convinced of his inability to be “invisible” even by the video camera recordings, which he called falsified).

The researchers tested the reliability of these hypotheses on an experimental group of people who first completed a test measuring their abilities in a certain area (logical thinking, grammar or sense of humor), then had to guess their level of knowledge and skills in this area.

The study found two interesting trends:

• The least able people (referred to in the study as incompetent) tended their abilities significantly overestimate. In addition, the worse their abilities were, the more they rated themselves. For example, the more insufferable a person was, the more funny he thought he was. This fact had already been clearly formulated by Charles Darwin: “Ignorance more often gives rise to confidence than knowledge”;
• The most capable (designated as competent) tended their abilities underestimate. This is explained by the fact that if a task seems simple to a person, then he gets the feeling that this task will be simple for everyone else.

In the second part of the experiment, the subjects had the opportunity to study the test results of the other participants, followed by repeated self-assessment.

Competente Compared to the others, they realized that they were better than they expected. Therefore, they adjusted their self-esteem and began to evaluate themselves more objectively.

Incompetente After contact with reality, they did not change their biased self-assessment. They were unable to recognize that others' abilities were better than their own. As Forrest Gump said, “Every fool is a fool.”

1 The main character of the novel of the same name by Winston Groom and the film by Robert Zemeckis, a person with mental retardation. - Note lane.

The conclusion of the study is this: people who don't know don't know (don't realize) that they don't know. The incompetent tend to significantly overestimate their own abilities, they fail to recognize the abilities of others, and when confronted with reality they do not change their assessment. For simplicity, about people suffering from this problem, we will say that they have Dunning-Kruger(abbreviated as D–K). Research has shown that people come to biased and erroneous conclusions, but their bias prevents them from understanding and admitting it.

THE RESEARCH SHOWED TWO MAIN TRENDS:

I. COMPETENTE HAVE A TENDENCY TO UNDERESTIMATE THEMSELVES

II. INCOMPETENTTHEY HAVE A TENDENCY TO OVEREVALUATE THEMSELVES.

The brain protects us with sweet ignorance

The fact that in the case of the Dunning-Kruger effect one could talk about some kind of protective reaction of the human brain confirms a condition called anosognosia 1 . Let's give an example: a patient who has lost one of his limbs and suffers from anosognosia thinks that he still has this limb, and it is impossible to explain to him otherwise. When the doctor talks to the patient about his good left arm, the patient communicates normally. But as soon as the conversation turns to the right hand, which he does not have, the patient pretends not to hear. Monitoring of brain activity showed that the patient does this unconsciously, his damaged brain blocks information indicating its own deficiency at a subconscious level. There were even cases recorded when it was impossible to explain to a blind person that he was blind. This extreme case of anosognosia supports the theory that our brains are capable of ignoring information that indicates we are incompetent.

Sometimes, as in the case of anosognosia, our brain reacts to information that indicates the error of our mental models by simply ignoring it. Keeps us in a state of bias and sweet ignorance. What risk does this pose? Why should we strive for objectivity?

1 Anosognosia- lack of critical assessment by the patient of his defect or disease. Observed mainly in cases of damage right parietal lobe of the brain, in some cases it may indicate a severe mental disorder with impaired criticism, in others it may indicate the patient’s personality type or the fact that he is using psychological defense mechanisms.