Google almost has answer to every question one types in the search option of the search engine. But a recently conducted study suggested that instant online access to information can inflate people's sense of their own intelligence.

Study lead author Matthew Fisher, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Yale University, said in a statement that it becomes very easy to confuse own knowledge with external source.

"But when people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet", he said.

Fisher and his team during the study had hundreds of people who were engaged in a series of experiments. In one of the experiment people were divided into group and were asked to answer random questions.

One group was told they can search out for the answer on the Internet, but the other group was not given this freedom.

Results showed the group that searched for information on the Internet believed they were smarter about topics as compared to people who were placed in the control group, who didn't have access to Internet to search answer.

In another experiment, participants were shown images showing activities of brain (their brain and others) as tracked by MRI.

Participants who frequently used Internet searches typically chose the smarter-looking, more active brain images as being their own brains, found Fisher's team.

Researchers during the study also found that even when the participants were unable to find the information they were looking for on the Web. Authors called these people in 'search mode', having an inflated sense of their own smart.

Having an inflated sense of knowledge could be especially dangerous in politics or in other areas where important decisions need to be made, according to Fisher.