Pick a topic, rate your own authority on it before you see a single question, then take a 25-question quiz against the clock. We'll plot your confidence against your real score on the Dunning-Kruger curve — no judgment, just a coordinate.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
It's a cognitive bias where people with limited knowledge or skill in a subject overestimate their own competence — because the same lack of skill that produces poor performance also stops them from recognizing it. As real understanding grows, confidence often dips before eventually catching back up to match actual ability.
Pick a topic below, rate your own knowledge honestly, then take a short quiz. We'll plot where you land on the curve.
25 multiple-choice questions per topic, spanning elementary → postdoctorate difficulty · 30 seconds per question
Choose a topic
Special thanks to
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. — the original research behind the effect this app is named for.
The 1,400 quiz questions and answers were generated by Claude, an AI language model from Anthropic, drawing on its general training knowledge rather than any single curated textbook, dataset, or exam bank. They have not been independently fact-checked against primary sources, so treat any individual answer as likely-but-not-guaranteed correct.