Keyword: «dunning-kruger effect»

Examination on the self-efficacy among Psychology majors can help to understand the factors influencing their professional development and success in their future careers. This may be useful information for developing and improving educational programs and teaching methods in the field of psychology. The purpose of the article is to show the results of an empirical study of the self-efficacy of psychology students. The sample consisted of 83 students of the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education "Petrozavodsk State University", Department of Psychology. As a result of the study, it was found out that the professional self-efficacy depending on the course of study is a clear manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect – the assessment of their own knowledge by 1-st year students (3.90) and 2-nd year students (4.42) exceeds the assessment by 3-d year students (3.80). The overall level of self-efficacy decreases proportionally from the 1st to the 4th year of study.

The paper attempts to characterize the Dunning-Kruger effect from the point of view of the psychological content of socially conditioned cognitive errors (distortions). The Dunning-Kruger effect is understood as the tendency of people with a low level of competence to make erroneous conclusions and wrong decisions, but unable to realize this due to the low level of their competence. A study was conducted in order to specify the psychological content of the effect. The results showed that the psychological characteristics that contribute to the manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect include inflated self-esteem and anticipatory inadequacy of the individual.