The scientists compared how well the volunteers faired in the three consecutive questions to see if the volunteers were actually getting better at figuring out the problems themselves or just at copying the right answers. They found that there was no improvement from one question to the next; even when individuals had realised in the first round of questions that finding the solutions required deeper thought, in the next question they were back at square one. The scientists say it's a surprising result because it's already been proven that analytical reasoning can be primed very simply, by showing subjects a picture of Rodin's Thinker for example, or using a challenging font to type up questions. The team say the results show that whilst social networks helped the volunteers choose better answers they didn't prime them to answer more logically themselves, showing that 'social learning does not seem to help individuals bypass their bias in favour of intuition but rather help society as a whole thrive despite this bias'.Whilst some commentators say the internet is making us stupid and others say it's helping us make more informed decisions the scientists behind this study say that they might both be right. Being able to copy from other people in vast networks means analytical responses rapidly spread, fulfilling their promise of improved decision-making for well-connected people. 'On the other hand, the bias may very well decrease the frequency of analytical reasoning by making it easy and commonplace for people to reach analytical response without engaging analytical processing' say the team, and this tendency to copy without thinking 'can explain why increased connectivity may eventually make us stupid by making us smarter first'.