Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

The DunningKruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others".

Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

   tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
   fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
   fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
   recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.