The Importance Of Self-Evaluation

Concisely describe the main arguments and evidence presented by the paper (600 words). Authors Carter and Dunning (2008), state that the way people view their competence is often different from their actual competence rank. They further argue that the reason people make inaccurate conclusions about their competence, is because self-evaluation itself is complicated work. According to the authors, the information environment that people live in does not provide all the essential data for a detailed self-evaluation. The authors mention the need for people to know themselves well enough. They explain that when people know themselves accurately they are more likely to make beneficial decisions on how to better spend their time and efforts. Furthermore,

Despite this claim, Carter and Dunning (2008) argue that the feedback given is not enough to help them achieve a good self-assessment. When it comes to ambiguous feedback for example, the information received from the environment might be unclear (Carter and Dunning, 2008). The authors gave an example of Sam being turned down by Hazel, and Sam thinking about possible reasons as to why she really turned down his invitation to dinner. They went on to assume that Sam would probably think about the event for some time. However, there is no reason to believe that Sam would take it that hard, maybe he believed her and he does not think in a negative way. Biased feedback on the other hand can do more good than harm. People prefer to keep bad feedback to themselves and deliver good feedback instead (Tesser and Rosen, 1975). This view is shared by Wilson and Dunn (2005) who state that people refrain from revealing their real views out of politeness for the other person. Negative feedback can cause self-handicapping as the ego is hurt and injured (Rhodewalt and Tragakis, (in press). The authors did a good job highlighting the different deficits in feedbacks, however their argument was too much on the negative side. They could have highlighted the positive aspects of feedbacks and how it can help build up someone’s self-evaluation. In general, too much emphasis was

The authors wanted to convince readers that people are not the blame for their faulty self-assessments, rather the problem lies within the information environment as well as insufficient feedback. The article is very useful in making people understand how much influence external factors can have on a person. However, the authors’ views were somewhat biased. They focused mostly on the negative aspects of relying on the information environment for accurate self-evaluation, but despite doing so with much conviction they did not provide any solutions to how this could be improved so that people would know how to search deeper within themselves for knowledge about one’s self. For example they should have talked about people who deliberately block out some thoughts and feelings as a way of protecting themselves. Furthermore they could have expanded on research or techniques that can help people to reveal themselves more by unblocking their hidden