Modernization and the age of internet have provided access to boundless amounts of information. But a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General stated that people using search engines like Google Inc. to search answers tend to live under illusion of being smarter than they actually are.

Researchers from Yale carried out a series of experiments and tested over 1,000 people to uncover how online interaction affects the way one think. They found that having internet access give people an overconfident view of their intelligence.

Researcher during the study divided the participants into two groups, and asked them some questions. One group was given the liberty to use internet to search answers and the other was not.

Results showed that participants who had looked for information online thought that they knew much more as compared to those who had looked up the information the traditional way like through a book or a tutor.

Researchers found this was also found to be true when the participants were asked about their knowledge and confidence in a topic that had nothing to do with what they had just searched for.

Lead researcher Matthre Fisher said in a statement that the internet is a powerful environment where one can enter any question, and can get back the access to the world's knowledge.

“It becomes easier to confuse one’s own knowledge with this external source. 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”, Fisher.

Frank Keil, a professor of psychology at Yale, believes that it is result of being in ‘search mode’, and its implications could be troubling.