Affiliation:
1. Department of Communication University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara California USA
2. Department of Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign Champaign Illinois USA
3. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign Champaign Illinois USA
Abstract
AbstractWhen responding to queries for information, people control thegrain size(precision–coarseness) of the information they communicate based on competing goals of accuracy and informativeness (Goldsmith & Koriat,Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1999,19, 167). Two experiments examined whether the act of searching for answers using the internet influences the granularity of the information people later choose to report. Participants who searched the internet for answers to general information questions later provided more precise (granular) estimates to questions in the absence of the internet when compared to participants who initially answered questions from memory and participants who initially were not asked any questions. These results indicate that searching the internet influences metacognitive processes underlying decisions about the granularity of the information we choose to communicate. The internet may “raise the bar” with respect to the informativeness of the information we feel obliged to offer.
Subject
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous),Developmental and Educational Psychology,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Cited by
5 articles.
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