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POPSWhy The Loudest are Often the Most Wrong This classic paper by Kruger and Dunning, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments , examines the psychological reasons for the unfortunately common correlation between ignorance and confidence. We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine. As Miller (1993) perceptively observed in the quote that opens this article, and as Charles Darwin (1871) sagely noted over a century ago, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." ( PDF here .)
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POPSThe story behind Hitler's moustache The prosaic explanation comes in a new biography of the writer Alexander Moritz Frey, who came to know him when both were lowly privates in a Bavarian infantry division. In a hitherto unpublished essay, Frey, who died in 1957, wrote of his first meeting with Hitler in 1915: "A pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar after the first shells of the daily evening attacks had begun to fall, fear and rage glowing in his eyes. "At that time he looked tall because he was so thin. A full moustache, which had to be trimmed later because of the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth."
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