Tag Archives: Opinion

Man Getting Shocked While Repairing Lamp

The Dunning-Kruger Effect, or ‘why incompetent people think they’re amazing’

How good are you at basketball? What about playing an instrument? Psychological research suggests we’re not actually very good at evaluating our own abilities accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities thanks to something known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Mexican red-kneed tarantula

Searching the Brain for the Roots of Fear

Do you know the difference between fearing something and worrying about it? How do things that probably won’t do us any harm come to symbolize threats? This commentary from Joseph LeDoux, the director of the Emotional Brain Institute and a professor of neural science, describes the problems that arise when fear turns to anxiety.