Internet search engines and encyclopaedic 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 just one-way. We too are affected by our use of the Internet, even if we do not realise it. For example, a recent article published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that the simple fact of using the web to access information could be making us consider ourselves smarter than we really are .

Researchers Matthew Fisher, Mariel K. Goddu and Frank C. Keil, from Yale University, believe that the simple fact of perceiving that we are able to access massive amounts of information quickly through electronic devices makes us more likely 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 the participants to significantly overestimate their capacity to retain and use information without consulting the network.

Questions and scales

The research by Fisher and his team began with a first phase in which a series of questions were asked to the volunteers. However, some of these people were not allowed to use any external sources of information, 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 previously. The participants had to score on a scale of 1 to 7 the degree to which they believed they were able to give explanations to questions related to the subject matter of each of the questions asked.

The results extracted from the statistical analysis showed how people who had consulted the Internet were significantly more optimistic in scoring themselves on ability to provide explanations on 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 having the possibility of looking for an answer to a question with or without the help of the Internet, all participants had to score their perception of their own level of knowledge with a scale between 1 and 7, in the same way as they would have to do 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 of perceiving one’s level of knowledge . It was after the phase in which some people were looking for information on the net that these differences emerged.

More experiments on this subject

In another version of the experiment, the researchers focused on making sure that members of the two groups saw exactly the same information, thus seeing how people are influenced by simply actively searching the Internet for data, regardless of what is found.

Some people were given instructions on how to go about searching for specific information about the question on a particular website where that data was found, while the rest of the people were shown those documents directly with the answer, without giving them the possibility of searching for it themselves.People with the possibility of searching for the information on the Internet continued to show a clear propensity to believe themselves to be somewhat smarter, judging by their way of scoring themselves on scales from 1 to 7.

The test to which the volunteers were submitted had some more variants to control in the best possible way the variables that could contaminate the results. For example, different search engines were used in successive experiments. And, in an alternative version of the test, the score of one’s level of knowledge was replaced by a final phase in which volunteers had to look at several images from brain scanners and decide which of those photographs most closely resembled their own brain . In line with the rest of the results, people who had been searching on the Internet tended to choose the images in which the brain was most active.

What made participants overestimate their knowledge was not the fact that they had found an answer to a question on the Internet, but the simple fact that they could search for information on the web. Researchers realized this by seeing how those who had to find an answer impossible to find on the Internet tended to overestimate themselves as much as those who did find what they were looking for.

A price to pay

These results seem to talk about 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 more blind to our limitations to find answers by ourselves, without the help of anything or anyone. In a way, this brings us back to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. We may have been blessed with the ability to believe that things are simpler than they really are, and this may even be very helpful in the vast majority of cases. However, this could become a problem when we have such a powerful resource as the Internet at hand.

We should not get lost and end up sacrificing on the altar of god Google 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 fibre optic cables begin.

Bibliographic references

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