Members in the Media
From: The Washington Post

Self-proclaimed ‘experts’ more likely to fall for made-up facts, study finds

The Washington Post:

If you consider yourself an expert in something or another, you might want to stop pretending you understand things you’ve never heard of. In a new study, researchers found that self-proclaimed “experts” in a topic were more likely than others to profess knowledge of terms that were actually made up for the purpose of the study.

If you watch Jimmy Kimmel Live, you’ve already seen this effect in action:

In the new study, which was published this week in the journal Psychological Science, researchers from Cornell University and Tulane University sought to catch test subjects in the act of “overclaiming” — that thing where you nod in agreement and say “oh, yeah, totally” when someone asks if you know about something you’ve never heard of.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post:

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