Searching Online May Make You Think You're Smarter Than You Are
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Could the characters in the sitcom "The Office" be inflating the sum of their knowledge via the Internet? NBC via Getty Images |
From NPR
Using the Internet is an easy way to feel omniscient. Enter a search term and the answers appear before your eyes.
But at any moment you're also just a few taps away from becoming an insufferable know-it-all. Searching for answers online gives people an inflated sense of their own knowledge, according to a study. It makes people think they know more than they actually do.
"We think the information is leaking into our head, but really the information is stored somewhere else entirely," Matthew Fisher, a doctoral student in cognitive psychology at Yale University, tells Shots. Fisher surveyed hundreds of people to get a sense of how searching the Internet affected how they rate their knowledge. His study was published Tuesday in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
To read the entire article go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/04/02/396810355/searching-online-may-make-you-think-youre-smarter-than-you-are
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