Searching for data on the Internet makes us believe that we are smarter

Internet search engines and encyclopedic web pages are a powerful tool when it comes to finding all kinds of information in a matter of seconds. However, our relationship with the cyber world is not only one-way. We too are affected by the use we make of the Internet, even if we are not aware of it. For example, a recent article published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that the simple fact of using the network to access information could be making us consider ourselves smarter than we really are.

Researchers Matthew Fisher, Mariel K. Goddu and Frank C. Keil of Yale University believe that simply perceiving that we are capable of accessing massive amounts of information rapidly through electronic devices makes us more prone to overestimate our level of knowledge. This hypothesis is supported by one of his latest investigations, in which he experimented with people who actively searched for data on the internet and others who did not have that possibility.

The different variants of the experiment show how the simple fact of having carried out an Internet search is enough for participants to significantly overestimate their ability to retain and use information without consulting the grid.

Questions and scales

Fisher's research and his team began with a first phase in which a series of questions were asked of the volunteers. However, some of these people were not allowed to use any external information sources, while the rest had to search the Internet for an answer to each question. Once this phase was over, the volunteers were given new questions related to topics that had nothing to do with what they had been asked before. Participants had to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 the degree to which they believed they were capable of give explanations to questions related to the theme of each of the questions raised.

The results extracted from the statistical analysis showed how people who had consulted the Internet were significantly more optimistic when rating themselves on ability to offer explanations about the topics covered in the questions.

However, to complement the results obtained, the researchers decided to create a more complete variant of the experiment in which, Before being able to search for an answer to a question with or without the help of the internet, all participants had to rate their perception of their own level of knowledge with a scale between 1 and 7, in the same way in which they would have to do it in the last phase of the experiment.

In this way it was possible to verify that in the two experimental groups (people who would use the Internet and those who would not) there were no significant differences in the way they perceived their own level of knowledge. It was after the phase where some people searched for information on the net that these differences arose.

More experiments about it

In another version of the experiment, the researchers focused on making sure that members of the two groups saw exactly the same information, in order to see how the simple fact of actively searching for data on the Internet influences people, regardless of what they is found.

To do this, some people were given instructions on how to go look for specific information about the question on a specific website where those data, while the rest of the people were directly shown those documents with the answer, without giving them the possibility to search for it themselves. ability to search for information on the Internet continued to show a clear propensity to believe that they are somewhat smarter, judging by the way they rate themselves on the scales of 1 to 7.

The test to which the volunteers were subjected had some more variants to control in the best possible way the variables that could contaminate the results. For example, in successive experiments different search engines were used. And, in an alternative version of the test, the score for the level of knowledge itself was replaced by a final phase in which the volunteers had to look at various images from brain scans and decide which of those photographs most closely resembled your own brain. Consistent with the other results, people who had been searching the Internet tended to choose the images in which the brain showed more activation.

What made the participants overestimate their knowledge was not the fact that they had found an answer to a question on the Internet, but the simple fact of being able to search for information In the net. The researchers realized this when they saw how those people who had to find a answer impossible to find on the Internet tended to overestimate themselves as much as those who did find what they they were looking for

a price to pay

These results seem to speak of a mephistophelian contract between us and the internet. Search engines offer us the virtual possibility of knowing everything if we have an electronic device nearby, but, at the same time, this could make us blind to our limitations in finding answers by ourselves, without the help of anything or nobody. In a way, this brings us back to Dunning–Kruger effect. Ours may have blessed us with the ability to believe that things are simpler than they really are, and this may even be very useful in the vast majority of cases. However, this could become a problem when we have a resource as powerful as the Internet at hand.

It is convenient not to get confused and end up sacrificing on the altar of google god our ability to judge our abilities. After all, the network of networks is extensive enough that it is difficult to find the point where our neurons end and the fiber optic cables begin.

Bibliographic references

• Fisher, M., Goddu, M. K. and Keill, F. c. (2015). Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates of Internal Knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, consult online at http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000...