It could be that self-proclaimed experts are just trying to look good, and claiming familiarity
they don’t actually feel. To assess this, the fourth experiment added a condition that explicitly
stated that some items were invented, giving a new incentive to the show-offs: to spot the
fakes. After this warning, participants were warier, and in general more willing to choose the
“never heard of it” option, but the higher rate of overclaiming errors by experts remained
unchanged