[News & Analysis] Psychology: Searching for the Google Effect on People’s Memory
In four cleverly designed experiments reported online this week in Science, psychologists confirm the so-called Google effect: a growing belief that people are using the Internet as a personal memory bank.
Author: John Bohannon
Four years ago, Betsy Sparrow became exasperated watching an old black-and-white film called Gaslight. She recognized the young actress playing the maid but couldn’t remember her name. Luckily, she had her smartphone. “I found the answer* online immediately,” she says, and the relief was palpable.
That incident sparked a conversation with her husband that continued into the night. “How did we use to remember things like this before the Internet?” wondered Sparrow, who at the time was a psychology graduate student at Harvard University.
