The illusion of knowledge

The internet may be making us shallow, but it’s making us think we’re deep.

A newly published study, by three Yale psychologists, shows that searching the web gives people an “illusion of knowledge.” They start to confuse what’s online with what’s in their head, which gives them an exaggerated sense of their own intelligence. The effect isn’t limited to the particular subject areas that people exploreon the web. It’s more general than that. Doing searches onone topicinflates people’ssense of...