Google can make you think you're smarter than you actually are, study shows

<img alt="Google-header" height="359" src="http://rack.2.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE1LzExLzAzLzZjL0dvb2dsZUhlYWRlLjhiMjVjLmpwZwpwCXRodW1iCTk1MHg1MzQjCmUJanBn/b19af42f/f14/Google-Header.jpg" width="640" /><br /> <br /> <section class="article-content" style="-webkit-transition: margin 0.2s; background-color: white; color: #555555; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 28.46875px; margin-top: 1em; max-width: 625px; transition: margin 0.2s; width: auto;"><div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> All that Google searching might be giving you a big head.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> Simon Oxenham at <em><a href="http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/10/googling-stuff-can-cause-us-to.html" style="color: #00aeef; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">BPS Research Digest</a></em> summarized a study from the <em><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/xge0000070" style="color: #00aeef; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Journal of Experimental Psychology</a></em> that found that after accessing information on the Internet, people might actually be overconfident about what they think they know.</div> <div class="see-also" style="font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase;"> <div class="inline-ad-seealso" style="margin: 0px 18.75px 0px auto; max-width: 625px;"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> Yale University's Matthew Fisher led a team of researchers conducting a study with 119 men and 83 women from Amazon’s <a href="https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome" style="color: #00aeef; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Mechanical Turk</a>, a web service for individuals and businesses to offer work or request workers for tasks.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> They asked a group of participants to use the Internet to answer questions such as “Why are there more women than men?” and “Why are there dimples on a golf ball?” In the control group, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="participants-were-asked-to" style="color: #00aeef;"></a><span class="microcontent" data-description="participants were asked to answer those questions without help from the Internet" data-fragment="participants-were-asked-to" data-micro="1">participants were asked to answer those questions without help from the Internet</span>. The researchers then asked all participants how confident they were in answering questions, without the Internet, about six different topics: weather, science, American history, food, health treatments and the human body.</div> <br /> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> The study found that "the participants who had used the Internet to search for answers were more likely to overestimate their own internal knowledge in unrelated areas." In other words, people think they are more knowledgeable than they actually are.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> Oxenham notes that "a recurring problem with claims about the potential harms of new technologies is that the criticisms are typically indistinguishable from criticisms of earlier technologies." In other words, "the same claims that are now being made of the Internet were once made of the printing press, and of the pen before that." So the study's finding might not be unique to just the Internet.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> Because of that, researchers attempted to focus solely on the Internet as its main point of study by separating it from other forms of receiving information.</div> <blockquote style="border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-width: 4px; border-style: none none none solid; color: #777777; margin: 0px 0px 0px 36px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 12px;"> <div style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> For example, the same effect was not found when the participants were simply presented with information that contained the answers to the questions, even if that content was precisely the same as that found online by the internet search group. The researchers achieved this by repeating the experiment with new participants and instructing some of them to search for specific resources, for example: “Please search for the scientificamerican.com page with this information,” while the control participants were simply shown the text from the same websites.</div> </blockquote> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> "This finding strongly suggests it was the activity of searching the web, rather than merely having access to external reference information, that led to the illusion of knowledge," Oxenham wrote. "Bizarrely, this remained true even if the search engine was rigged to turn up no useful results whatsoever."</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> Despite all this, researchers think the medium of the web is an important thing to consider in the study because its accessibility, speed and expertise can cause us to forget about our dependence on it.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> And that dependence is something that has been studied before. One team called it the "<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6043/776.abstract" style="color: #00aeef; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Google Effect</a>," which explains our tendency to easily forget information when we know it's all saved in a computer and retrievable with just a few clicks.</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"> <em>Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.</em></div> <div> <em><br /></em></div> <blockquote class="microcontent-wrapper pullquote" style="border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-style: none none none solid; border-width: 0px !important; clear: left; color: #777777; float: left; height: auto; margin: 15px 15px 35px -125px; max-width: 45%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px; position: relative; width: 400px;"> <div class="microcontent-shares" data-description="participants were asked to answer those questions without help from the Internet" data-fragment="participants-were-asked-to" data-url="" style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.25s ease; background: rgb(246, 245, 241); height: 0px; left: -47px; opacity: 0; padding: 5px; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition: opacity 0.25s ease; width: 30px;"> <a class="social-share microcontent-share-badge network-badge network-badge-facebook facebook" href="http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/google-search-study/?utm_cid=mash-prod-nav-sub-st#" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.3s ease; color: #3b579d; display: inline-block; height: 30px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px !important; position: relative; text-decoration: none; text-indent: -9900px; transition: color 0.3s ease; white-space: nowrap; width: 30px;"></a><br /></div> </blockquote> <div> <em><br /></em></div> </section>

Google can make you think you're smarter than you actually are, study shows

All that Google searching might be giving you a big head. Simon Oxenham at  BPS Research Digest  summarized a study from the  Journal o...

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