Daniel Wegner

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How Google is Changing Your Brain Summary

“How Google is Changing Your Brain” is an informative essay written by Daniel M. Wegner. Wegner was an American social psychologist who was born June 28 1948, and he lived until July 5 2013. He was also a professor at Harvard University for psychology. He was most known and recognized for his many experiments on thought suppression. He enjoyed figuring out human experience through thought suppression, conscious will, and mind perception. He also experimented some with transactive memory (how memories are shared with groups and relationship partners), and action identification (what people think they are doing). Many of his experiments were put together to pose the question, how is Google changing your mind? (1)

In the beginning of Wegner’s essay, he explains a scenario where a couple receives an invitation to a birthday party. He goes on to say what the couple does after receiving it. One person finds out if the dress code is formal or casual, the other takes note of the time and place of the party. Wegner says that everybody has different knowledge. If you don’t know something, you could likely ask someone else and they could know the answer. …show more content…
Nowadays you would be more likely to go to Google to find the answer to something, than to ask a friend or family member to answer a question. In the experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the participants were asked to copy 40 memorable facts into a computer. Half of the participants were told that their work would be saved in the computer, and the other half were told it would be erased. The experiment showed that people who believed the computer saved the information, were much worse at remembering. People showed to treat the computer as memory
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