The Internet brings the world to our fingertips, but it turns out that getting information online makes us feel a lot smarter than we really are, according to a Yale-led study published March 30 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

In nine different experiments with more than 1,000 participants, Yale psychologists found that if subjects received information through Internet searches, they rated their knowledge base as much greater than those who obtained the information through other methods.

In one experiment, people searched online for a website that answers the question, “How does a zipper work?” The control group received the same answer that they would have found online, but without searching 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 only provided text. Prior to the experiment, no such difference existed.

The effect was so strong that even when a full answer to a question was not provided to Internet searchers, they still had an inflated sense of their own knowledge.

The research was made possible by a grant from the Fuller Theological Seminary/Thrive Center for Human Development in concert with the John Templeton Foundation.