在論文《Self-insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself》中，[6]鄧寧描述達克效應為「日常生活中的病覺缺失症（英語：Anosognosia）」，該術語原為一種神經疾病，指失能者拒絕承認他的功能缺失。他說道：「若你能力不足，你並不會認知到自身的不足。」
在2011年鄧寧寫下了他對知識明顯貧乏者的觀察，他們缺乏認知到自已不足的能力，因此儘管他們不斷犯錯，依然認為自己相當能幹。[7]2014年鄧寧與赫爾澤（Erik G. Helzer）描述達克效應為「能力差者不夠格認識到自己的不足」。[8]
Dunning, David; Johnson, Kerri; Ehrlinger, Joyce; Kruger, Justin. Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 1 June 2003, 12 (3): 83–87. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01235（英語）.
David Dunning. The Dunning–Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One's Own Ignorance. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 2011, 44: 247–296. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-385522-0.00005-6. 3.1. Definition. Specifically, for any given skill, some people have more expertise and some have less, some a good deal less. What about those people with low levels of expertise? Do they recognize it? According to the argument presented here, people with substantial deficits in their knowledge or expertise should not be able to recognize those deficits. Despite potentially making error after error, they should tend to think they are doing just fine. In short, those who are incompetent, for lack of a better term, should have little insight into their incompetence—an assertion that has come to be known as the Dunning–Kruger effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999).
David Dunning; Erik G. Helzer. Beyond the Correlation Coefficient in Studies of Self-Assessment Accuracy: Commentary on Zell & Krizan (2014). Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2014, 9 (2): 126–130. PMID 26173250. doi:10.1177/1745691614521244. In other words, the best way to improve self-accuracy is simply to make everybody better performers. Doing so helps them to avoid the type of outcome they seem unable to anticipate. Discerning readers will recognize this as an oblique restatement of the Dunning–Kruger effect (see Dunning, 2011; Kruger & Dunning, 1999), which suggests that poor performers are not in a position to recognize the shortcomings in their performance.
