The Internet puts information right at our fingertips, but it's also making us a little overconfident when it comes to our own intelligence.

According to new research from Yale University published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the Internet makes us think we're smarter than we really are. In a series of nine different experiments with more than 1,000 participants, the researchers found that people who searched online for information rated their knowledge base as "much greater" than those who obtained the same information through other sources.

"This was a very robust effect, replicated time and time again," Matthew Fisher, a fourth-year Ph.D. student and the lead author of the study, said in a statement. "People who search for information tend to conflate accessible knowledge with their own personal knowledge."

In one such experiment, people were asked "How does a zipper work?" One group searched online for the answer, and the control group was given the same answer they would have found online, but didn't have to search for it themselves.

When later asked how well they understood completely unrelated domains of knowledge, those who searched the Internet rated their knowledge "substantially greater" than those who were given the answer.

"Prior to the experiment, no such difference existed," the researchers said.

And here's where it gets really interesting. The researchers found that this effect was so strong that people had an inflated sense of their own knowledge even when they couldn't find the answer they were looking for.

"The cognitive effects of 'being in search mode' on the Internet may be so powerful that people still feel smarter even when their online searches reveal nothing," Frank Keil, the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology and Linguistics and senior author of the paper, said in a statement.

Keil said the effect of this phenomenon may be most pronounced for the younger generation that has grown up with smartphones and the Internet.

"The cell phone is almost like the appendage of their brain," he said. "They don't even realize it's not real until they become unplugged."