Digital Smarts - Will the Internet Make You Smart?

The Internet may make you think you are smarter than you really are. Or at least that is the conclusion of a series of experiments chronicled in a new journal article by researchers at Yale University, who found that searching for answers on the Internet makes people more confident in their knowledge. Evidence from nine experiments shows that those who had access to web sites, even if those sites had little information about the topic under question, felt more confident about their knowledge of a subject. This confidence persisted even the subject failed to provide relevant answers when questioned on the topic.