Google Knows How to Make You Smart. No, Really.
November 18, 2021
Think you’re pretty clever, do you? According to a recent study you may be mistaken, especially if you use Google often. MSN declares, “Googling Everything Making Us Think We’re Smarter than We Really Are.” Reporter Dan Avery explains:
“According to a new study out of the University of Texas at Austin, when people use Google to find information they become more confident in their ability to provide correct answers even without using the search tool. Researchers tested subjects on general knowledge, allowing them to answer questions using their own recollection or by googling the answers. Those who used Google didn’t just get more answers right—they were more certain they’d instinctively know the answers to other questions. In some cases, subjects would later believe they had just recalled information from memory when they had actually googled it. ‘When we’re constantly connected to knowledge, the boundaries between internal and external knowledge begin to blur and fade,’ study author Adrian Ward, a marketing professor at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, said in a release. ‘We mistake the internet’s knowledge for our own.’ … While humans have relied on books and other resources for information since the dawn of the written word, Ward said, the speed and seamlessness of googling can cause us to confuse information found online with stuff we had stored in our gray matter.”
Yikes—talk about fooling oneself. Avery frames the findings as a modern version of the Dunning-Kruger effect. For the study, Ward had subjects answer some questions with or without access to an online search. It is no surprise those who looked up the answers were more confident in their accuracy than those who had not. However, the googlers were also more confident in their own memories. Suspecting the speed of search may play a role, Ward built a 25-second delay into a version of Google. Those participants did not demonstrate the same overconfidence as the first group. Interesting.
Another tweak was to compare subjects searching with Google to those using the more wordy and context-rich Wikipedia. The Google users were less accurate, but more importantly they were more apt to attribute their answers to their own brains than to the search engine. Ward’s theory is the additional time spent discerning an answer at Wikipedia means users actually remember where the information came from. In his alarming words, “We’re seeing that [Google users] even forget that they googled a question.” Not good—as the researcher notes, such overconfidence in one’s own knowledge can lead to poor life decisions or to students spending less time studying than they should. Let’s consider social steering, the Google way.
Cynthia Murrell November 18, 2021
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