Study Shows Internet Users Think they Are Smarter than Others

Researchers says Internet has a lot of information found than the one in the library

Nowadays, everyone’s hooked online! You can easily get information in searching it over from Yahoo! and Google.

According to a recent study from Yale University, they found out that people who have access and research the topic to an online search engine are confident in their knowledge than the one doing it in a library.

The said experiment which was tested more than 1,000 students. Then, it was compared to the people used the Internet and those who used the analog method. The result showed that searching for explanations on the Internet made them think that they knew more than the topic.

An excerpt from the study that was published at Journal of Experimental Psychology : “In many ways, our minds treat the Internet as a transactive memory partner, broadening the scope of knowledge to which we have access.” “The results of these experiments suggest that searching the Internet may cause a systematic failure to recognize the extent to which we rely on outsourced knowledge.”

According to the study’s lead researcher, Matthew Fisher said about Internet surfers’ perceived intelligence should be a warning to future generations when it comes to making important, informed decisions.

“With the Internet, the lines become blurry between what you know and what you think you know,” Fisher said. “In cases where decisions have big consequences, it could be important for people to distinguish their own knowledge and not assume they know something when they actually don’t.”, he added.