Good Evening, I'm Rod Serling

[don]

What’s a Bailed-Out Banker Really Worth?

By STEVEN BRILL

Kenneth Feinberg, Washington’s pay czar, has grappled more than anyone with the question of how much to pay executives at failed companies.

and this is the Twilight Zone

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/ma...tion-t.html?hp

[Rajiv]

Re: Good Evening, I'm Rod Serling

From the NYT article

WHERE EVERYONE IS ABOVE AVERAGE

And they did shoot high. To take a near-comic example, the firms did not present a single executive as meriting a pay grade below the 50th percentile of their supposed peer group, according to two people in Feinberg’s office. In fact, all 136 of the executives (the 25 top earners for each of the seven companies, less 39 who left during the year) were depicted as well above average, typically in the 75th percentile or higher. And the peer groups they were supposed to be in were often inflated; for example, someone running a unit might be portrayed as a chief executive because, the argument went, he ran a really big unit.

Brings to mind these videos

Have you ever wondered why incompetent people tend to over estimate their ability? People with little knowledge about particular subjects tend to, firstly, not recognize their lack of knowledge, and secondly, not be able to recognize expertise in others. Research by Dunning and Kruger found a remarkable link between incompetence and confidence. He also explores the Lake Wobegon effect, the phenomenon that people tend to overestimate their own abilities.

The original article - Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

and also Why we overestimate our competence

We've all seen it: the employee who's convinced she's doing a great job and gets a mediocre performance appraisal, or the student who's sure he's aced an exam and winds up with a D.

The tendency that people have to overrate their abilities fascinates Cornell University social psychologist David Dunning, PhD. "People overestimate themselves," he says, "but more than that, they really seem to believe it. I've been trying to figure out where that certainty of belief comes from."

Dunning is doing that through a series of manipulated studies, mostly with students at Cornell. He's finding that the least competent performers inflate their abilities the most; that the reason for the overinflation seems to be ignorance, not arrogance; and that chronic self-beliefs, however inaccurate, underlie both people's over and underestimations of how well they're doing.

Meanwhile, other researchers are studying the subjective nature of self-assessment from other angles. For example, Steven Heine, PhD, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, is showing that self-inflation tends to be more of a Western than a universal phenomenon. And psychologist Larry Gruppen, PhD, of the University of Michigan Medical School, is examining inaccurate self-assessments among medical students, where the costs of self-inflation can be particularly high (see related article).

Knowing thyself isn't easy

Jocks and Geeks any one?

[c1ue]

Re: Good Evening, I'm Rod Serling

A pretty disappointing article from Stephen Brill.

Neither terribly revealing, nor particularly informative. I especially am displeased how poorly emphasized was the fact that the 'pay czar' really didn't do anything of note - choosing to placate both sides via technicalities.

[fallout]

Re: Good Evening, I'm Rod Serling

Solid point there Rajiv, and bookmarked for future reference. Thanks!