Talk:Illusion of explanatory depth

My recent edit and good article nomination
@I'ma editor2022 I noticed you nominated this article for WP:GAN. In its current state I think it would almost certainly fail, being far from comprehensive of literature on the topic. Instead of filling that out I have decided to just directly made improvements to the article. I think the article could still use expansions for a number of sections, an easy one I think is to make detailed comparisons to other illusions of competence (see [3] and [4] as starting points).

I've tried to make neutral statement of what type of phenomenon it is. See Talk:Dunning–Kruger_effect; claiming it is exclusively a cognitive bias is currently contentious (although admittedly much less than the dunning-kruger effect).

To quote [1], the effect is not observed for non-explanatory types of knowledge: "The illusion did not occur for knowledge of procedures." The original 2002 Rozenblit and Keil paper also doesn't demonstrate the effect occuring in other types of knowledge. That said, if you can find citations to support its effect for other types of knowledge, I question if it is really even the same effect unless explicitly stated in the source, since "explanatory depth" is half the title of the article.

more highly people rate their knowledge, the greater the strength of the illusion: This part of the article was contradicted by the cited source. According to [2] page 1672, "Performance improved—but was still not perfect—for bicycle experts (in Experiment 3) and for nonexperts shown a real bicycle to copy (see note 1)." Note 1 is a discussion of how "we may be using the world as an 'outside memory' to save us from having to store huge amounts of information" -- not relevant to the claim.

I remove the "see also" category as it is being used as a general references list and all three citations were already in the bibliography. For the third one, "Why do we think we understand the world more than we actually do?", it doesn't seem to be a reliable source for claims about the topic as it does not indicate peer review, it looks like it was written on a blog.

[1] Mills, Candice M., and Frank C. Keil. "Knowing the limits of one’s understanding: The development of an awareness of an illusion of explanatory depth." Journal of experimental child psychology 87.1 (2004): 1-32.

[2] Lawson, Rebecca. "The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work." Memory & cognition 34.8 (2006): 1667-1675.

[3] Lewinsohn, Peter M., et al. "Social competence and depression: the role of illusory self-perceptions." Journal of abnormal psychology 89.2 (1980): 203.

[4] Tasic, Slavisa. "The illusion of regulatory competence." Critical Review 21.4 (2009): 423-436.

Darcyisverycute (talk) 08:14, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestions, and now looking back at the revisions and version of the page before you majorly edited it, I think you're absolutely right, and that this page was far from being comprehensive on the topic. Also, thanks for the WP:BOLD edits that you made. I suppose I could remove the GA nominations too? Thanks anyways! — I&#39;ma editor2022 (🗣️💬 &#124;📖📚) 19:32, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
 * @I'ma editor2022 Think of it this way: I found and improved the article due to your GA nomination. Happy to help ^_^ Darcyisverycute (talk) 01:11, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks again! — I&#39;ma editor2022 (🗣️💬 &#124;📖📚) 01:23, 27 May 2022 (UTC)