So… can we ever really know what we know? As with most things in life, it depends, and we don't fully know! Before embarking on the quest to figure out the answer to this question, we must first understand a little bit of history about what it means to know things.
The History of Epistemic Cognition and Metacognition
Back in the 1970s, William Perry constructed a model of epistemic cognition.…what is epistemic cognition you ask? According to Perry, individuals transition through successive levels of beliefs and views about knowledge (Greene et al., 2018). There have been many additional models proposed about epistemic cognition over the years all based on Perry’s work. Many of these models share the premise that individuals shift to more sophisticated views of knowledge and what it means to know things as they progress through education (Greene et al., 2018). Individuals typically begin viewing knowledge from a realist perspective, which means that you believe knowledge is essentially objective facts (Greene & Yu, 2016). Beyond the realist perspective is absolutism. Absolutism reflects the perspective that individuals can have objective knowledge, but also understand that their knowledge or perspective may not reflect reality (Greene & Yu, 2016). The following phase is multiplist. Multiplist perspective views knowledge as a “construction of reality” (Greene & Yu, 2016, pp. 47) meaning that knowledge is subjective and can change over time. The final phase is evaluativist. Evaluativsts believe that understanding or knowing everything is impossible, however we can use objective and subjective knowledge to help us understand the world around us (Greene & Yu, 2016).
At this point you are probably wondering why I am giving you a history lesson? Because without understanding an individual's beliefs about knowledge or epistemic cognition, it would be very difficult to know what we really know. That big question partially hinges on what an individual believes is knowledge and how knowledge is defined.
OKAY, so now that we have a little background on what epistemic cognition is and how beliefs about our knowledge can influence what we think knowledge is, we now need to understand more about reflecting on our knowledge, or metacognition. Metacognition is commonly described as thinking about thinking. Going back to the big question, if we are really able to know what we know, we HAVE to be able to think about what we know and self-assess our own knowledge. Metacognition has been well studied in a variety of fields and all agree that humans are able to self-reflect or think about their thinking (Greene et al., 2018).
Measuring Knowledge
Great, so we have established that we can in fact think about our thinking so the final step is to figure out how we measure our knowledge! The concept of evaluating how accurate we are about our knowledge is also known as knowledge calibration. Individuals can either be well calibrated (meaning that their assessment of their knowledge is accurate) or poorly calibrated depending on how they assess their knowledge compared to what they actually know. If an individual is poorly calibrated, they are either overconfident and know less than they think they do, or underconfident, knowing more than they think they do. Knowledge calibration is a field of research that goes back many decades. In fact, back in 1999 psychology researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger … (Yes, THE Dunning and Kruger!!) performed four experiments on undergraduate students that evaluated participants’ ability to assess their knowledge. Four studies were performed in a variety of subjects. The first study investigated the calibration of humor and participants' ability to decide what jokes are funny and what jokes others would find funny. Results of this study found that generally, participants overestimated their ability to deduce what is funny and that individuals who were the most overconfident were the least aware of it … ouch (Kruger & Dunning, 1999)! The second study investigated the ability of participants to self-assess their logical reasoning compared to that of other students and estimate their success on a 20-item reasoning test. Dunning and Kruger found the same results on the logical reasoning study that they did with the humor study. Researchers went on to perform two additional studies focusing on grammar and metacognition. During these two studies, it was found that individuals with the poorest grammar were also deficient in metacognitive skills, however, if individuals are trained to improve their metacognitive skills, their knowledge calibration can improve (Kruger & Dunning, 1999).
So, relating this back to metacognition, individuals who have poor knowledge calibration typically have poor metacognition to judge their own knowledge, thus resulting in a poor self-assessment (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). The interesting other finding that they found throughout their studies is not just that individuals with poor competence have inflated self-assessment, but that individuals on the opposite end of the spectrum with high knowledge, tend to underestimate their knowledge (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). Thus, individuals can be poorly calibrated two ways, either under-confident or over-confident.
Knowledge Calibration in the 20th Century
So now that we’ve learned about knowledge calibration and that a good chunk of us is pretty bad at evaluating how much we really know (yikes!) let's discuss how these concepts have been put to use in today’s society. Knowledge calibration has been well studied in the fields of psychology and education, and recently it is also being applied to other fields such as marketing and consumer sciences. Obviously, the use and dependency on computers and technology has skyrocketed over the last two decades. The quick rise and development of technology has really caused a spectrum of ability to use the internet. In fact, Dunning and Kruger’s research on knowledge calibration has now permeated other fields including studies on the world wide web. In 2007, Kishore Pillai and Charles Hofacker investigated knowledge calibration of the web and explored how involvement, usage, gender, knowledge type, and experience impact an individual's knowledge calibration. The researchers recruited two groups, one with 151 undergraduate business students and another group consisting of 153 adults (Pillai & Hofacker, 2007). Participants completed a questionnaire about their web usage, experience, knowledge, and involvement, and researchers then compared the answers of the two groups. At the end of the study, researchers concluded that involvement with the web assists in knowledge calibration and appropriate knowledge calibration in turn reduces user frustration with the web. Furthermore, researchers found that an individual's usage, experience, and gender did not affect their knowledge calibration (Pillai & Hofacker, 2007). Obviously, the concept of knowledge calibration can be applied to many different fields and may be different depending on topic being studied.
Bottom Line
So, what do we think? Can we ever really know what we know? Based on current research I’d say I’m not too confident, however, we can get closer to knowing what we know by being more calibrated and skilled at metacognition. Tips and tricks for that in another post. Thanks for reading!
About the author: Lindsey Kojich is a doctoral student in Health Sciences and a CISLL affiliate.
References
Greene, J. A., Cartiff, B. M., & Duke, R. F. (2018). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between epistemic cognition and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(8), 1084–1111. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000263
Greene, J. A., & Yu, S. B. (2016). Educating Critical Thinkers: The Role of Epistemic Cognition. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(1), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732215622223
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121
Pillai, K. G., & Hofacker, C. (2007). Calibration of consumer knowledge of the web. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 24(3), 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2007.02.001
