Google-induced confidence in decision skills changes experiences : a self-fulfilling prophecy

Abstract

The Internet is the ultimate memory entity, storing unimaginable amounts of information and capable of retrieving target pieces in less than a second. Thanks to tools like Google, resorting to this entity when trying to remember or learn facts has become as natural for people as eating when feeling hungry. Recent evidence suggests that embracing the Internet as a memory resource deregulates metacognition because people conflate knowledge accessed online with their own. The current research shows that this conflation entails a “feeling of already knowing” that, in consumer contexts, leads to overconfidence in decision skills. Most importantly, and contrasting with the common view of overconfidence as a trap, this research proposes that, albeit illusory, Google-induced choice confidence (the belief that the chosen option is superior to the dismissed ones) gives rise to affective expectations that spill over into subjective experiences. In essence, the Internet entails a self-fulfilling prophecy where it misguides people into believing that they made an objectively optimal decision but also leads them to have subjectively better experiences as the outcome of that decision.