Is there a name for the fallacy where you attribute your success in life to your own intelligence, and thus assume that you are smarter than everyone else, and that you therefor must be right about everything?
The "fundamental attribution error" is a bias where people attribute their own success to their inner abilities and other people success to external circumstances. (It's the reverse when thinking about failure)
For the second part of "I'm superior and know-it-all", I'd say it's good ol' jerk-ery?
The temptation that when you are smart you should become the guardian of the world, a world based on your learnings, your ultimate truths, truths you find easier and more quickly found than by the lay-person. Or so the temptation goes. It allows you to license your morality; the ends justify the means. What you are doing evilly now will be paid off twice-fold by the good it will lead to later. Right?
There's the Fundamental Attribution Error and Dunning-Kruger effects too. And on behavior... Illusory Superiority combines with Moral Licensing (allowing yourself to be equally good and evil because you "match the two") and the dis-inhibition effect which people with greater success take more risks (including affecting other people negatively).
I think these effects all sort of combine. It's not necessary intelligence but power, at least as perceived by the individual that seems to be a bit of an issue (e.g. the individual who thinks they are smarter at doing X innately feels more powerful and then has less inhibition about expressing their superiority and trying to dominate over others).
We've all seen the person who ought to have moved on who hangs on to their former glory fail to understand they are not in prime condition and who tries to exert power they nolonger hold too.. to me that is the real opposite of imposter syndrome. it's when peoples perception of themself and social dynamics don't move with the times.
Just because it's one of my pet peeves, this is not what Dunning Kruger says. What it says is that people who are poorly skilled in a task will overestimate their skill and those highly skilled will underestimate, but not that the poorly skilled estimate themselves to be better than the highly skilled.
From the wikipedia article you link:
> Among laypeople, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as the claim that people with low intelligence are more confident in their knowledge and skills than people with high intelligence.
My response was directed specifically at the OP's second question, about the "opposite" of impostor syndrome, and not the first one.
The dunning krugger effect is widely regarded as the polar opposite of it:
- "If the Dunning-Kruger effect is being overconfident in one's knowledge or performance, its polar opposite is imposter syndrome or the feeling that one is undeserving of success. People who have imposter syndrome are plagued by self-doubts and constantly feel like frauds who will be unmasked any second." [1]
- "This is the opposite to the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Imposter Syndrome is a cognitive bias where someone is unable to acknowledge their own competence. Even when they may have
multiple successes they struggle to attribute their success to internal factors." [2]
- "The opposite of the Peter Principle and Dunning-Kruger effect is the imposter syndrome. This is when smart, capable people underestimate their (...)" [3]
Sort of an opposite impostor syndrome?