Study Shows People 'Like' on Internet What Other People 'Like'
When someone likes a comment or article online, other readers are more likely to agree with that sentiment.
When someone likes a comment or article online, other readers are more likely to agree with that sentiment.
According to a study from researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, using a website that was undisclosed, when a thread comment was given a positive vote, it eventually garnered 25 percent more approval.
Sinan Aral, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management said: “it’s hard to distinguish the effect of high quality from the effect of social influence bias. It could be that past positive ratings have snowballed to create a high score, or it could just be that those items likely to get high scores are just of high quality.”
As part of the study, researchers manipulated the ratings by adding positive or negative votes to reader’s comments on article threads.
Researchers then tracked the reactions of other readers, and found that people were 32 percent more inclined to like the comment if it already had positive votes.
Comments that had initially been given a negative vote or left neutral had scores similar to the control group that was left alone, and surprisingly even saw people add positive votes to correct the negativity.
When someone likes a comment or article online, other readers are more likely to agree with that sentiment.
According to a study from researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, using a website that was undisclosed, when a thread comment was given a positive vote, it eventually garnered 25 percent more approval.
Sinan Aral, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management said: “it’s hard to distinguish the effect of high quality from the effect of social influence bias. It could be that past positive ratings have snowballed to create a high score, or it could just be that those items likely to get high scores are just of high quality.”
As part of the study, researchers manipulated the ratings by adding positive or negative votes to reader’s comments on article threads.
Researchers then tracked the reactions of other readers, and found that people were 32 percent more inclined to like the comment if it already had positive votes.
Comments that had initially been given a negative vote or left neutral had scores similar to the control group that was left alone, and surprisingly even saw people add positive votes to correct the negativity.