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Internet makes us feel smarter

08.04.2015

With the advent of the World Wide Web, a huge amount of information has become easily accessible: we can find out anything about anything at any time. Perhaps that is why we often think that we ourselves have become smarter. This is not a joke at all: experiments by psychologists from Yale have shown that people sitting on the Internet really increase the illusion of their own intelligence.

The study involved about a thousand people who had to answer some question - for example, how does a zipper work. Only one was asked to search the World Wide Web for the answer, while the others were given printouts of texts from the websites where the Internet group had found the answer. That is, the information, in fact, was the same, just the form of submission and the search process were different. Then they both had to say if they could answer another question - for example, why are cloudy nights warmer than cloudless ones.

The answer itself was not important here, and it was not necessary to answer at all, only self-esteem, confidence or uncertainty in one's own competence was required. And it turned out that those who had previously searched for an answer on the Internet considered themselves more knowledgeable, more aware of the new problem (although the next question had nothing to do with the previous one).

Moreover, intellectual self-confidence increased even when the network could not find a satisfactory answer at all (psychologists either chose a too difficult question - for example, why was the history of the ancient Meroitic kingdom more peaceful than the history of the states of Ancient Greece? - Or they used network filters, to make inaccessible sites with the necessary information). Before the experiment, the confidence in their own knowledge was approximately the same for everyone, that is, it was precisely in the Internet search.

Moreover, people increased confidence in their personal intelligence, that is, they believed that they themselves knew a lot, and access to the network had nothing to do with it. However, there was another nuance here: when a person was offered to immediately follow the link to the necessary information, then the intellectual self-esteem remained the same. In other words, it is not just access to the Internet that is important, but an active search in it.

The explanation here can be simple: when a person looks for answers with the help of a source that needs to be worked on (for example, in a book, or talking with someone else who needs to ask clear questions and analyze the answers), he has time to realize what exactly he does not know. In the case of Internet surfing, it can be impossible to distinguish between "what I know" and "what I think I know".

The problem might not be worth talking about, but real competence does not necessarily increase after an online search session, and even if a person did not learn anything as a result, it would seem to him that now he knows everything about everything. And now let's multiply such a curious psychological effect on the worldwide prevalence of mobile gadgets connected to the global network, and think about whether we are now facing a general intellectual stagnation - as a result of information technology progress.

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