People mistake the internet's knowledge for their own.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Science

Background:

• Humans increasingly rely on the internet for information retrieval.
• Distinguishing between internal and external knowledge is crucial for accurate self-assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether people can accurately differentiate between their own knowledge and internet-sourced information.
• To examine the impact of internet search on self-perceived cognitive abilities and future knowledge prediction.

Main Methods:

• Eight experiments involving 1,917 participants.
• Participants used Google to answer general knowledge questions.
• Assessed confidence in internal knowledge, thinking, and memory recall.

Main Results:

• Participants using Google were more confident in their ability to access external information.
• Internet search led to overconfidence in personal thinking and memory abilities.
• Users erroneously predicted greater future knowledge without internet assistance.

Conclusions:

• The seamless interface of online search blurs the lines between internal and external knowledge.
• Overreliance on the internet can lead to a misattribution of external information to personal cognition.
• This misattribution results in inflated self-confidence and potentially impaired independent knowledge recall.