Downing effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (February 2008) |
 |
This article lacks information on the notability of the subject matter. Please help improve this article by providing context for a general audience, especially in the lead section. (February 2008) |
 |
This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (February 2008) |
 |
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Dunning-Kruger effect. (Discuss) |
The Downing effect describes the tendency for people with bellow average IQs to overestimate their intelligence, while people with above average intelligence are likely to underestimate their intelligence. The propensity to predictably misjudge ones own intelligence was first noted by C. L. Downing who conducted the first cross cultural studies on perceived intelligence. His studies also evidenced that the ability to accurately estimate other’s intelligence was proportional to ones own intelligence. This means the lower the IQ score of an individual the less they can appreciate and accurately appraise other's intelligence. The lower someone’s IQ the more likely they are to rate themselves as more intelligent than those around them. Conversely, people with a high IQ, while better at appraising other’s intelligence overall, are still likely to rate people of similar intelligence as themselves as having higher IQs. As the old adage goes, ‘The more you know the more you know you don’t know’.
The disparity between actual IQ and perceived IQ has also been noted between genders by British psychologist Adrian Furnham,. Men are prone to overestimate their intelligence by around 5 points while woman are likely to underestimate their IQ by a similar proportion.
