Our bizarre brains, part 2

I wrote last week about our bizarre brains, and how the mental shortcuts we use can sometimes lead us to make some strange decisions and/or determinations. Following in that same vein, I was directed to this study by multiple internet sources. To summarize the study, a pair of researchers at NYU's Stern School of Business have been engaging in ongoing research into the impact of product reviews on internet product sales. Long story short, they've found some weird stuff (emphasis mine):

In our recent (award-winning) WWW2011 paper “Towards a Theory Model for Product Search”, we noticed that demand for a hotel increases if the online reviews on TripAdvisor and Travelocity are well-written, without spelling errors; this holds no matter if the review is positive or negative. In our TKDE paper “Estimating the Helpfulness and Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics“, we observed similar trends for products sold and reviewed on Amazon.com.

What's going on here? Why would a well-written negative review increase our demand for the product in question? Could it be that we just want to buy what the smart people bought, regardless of whether or not they liked it? Or is it simply that well-written reviews lend legitimacy to the product, and let us know that others have made the decision to purchase it? Are we just constantly seeking strength in (perceived) numbers?

The researchers themselves seem to subscribe to the latter theory. They write:

A review that is well-written tends to inspire confidence about the product, even if the review is negative. Typically such reviews are perceived as objective and thorough. So, if we have a high-quality, but negative, review this may serve as a guarantee that the negative aspects of the product are not that bad after all.

I think that all of this is strange, but somehow unsurprising. Articles, reviews, tweets, and other internet information give us a relative dearth of tools with which to verify their veracity and authenticity. We are thus very vulnerable to bad information, a dynamic that I've covered here at some length before.

There are really only three pieces of information that we can rely on to determine if any internet site is reputable or not--the domain name (we'll trust "ESPN.com" before we trust "baseballdudes.com", for example), the quality of the site design (no Geocities pages, please), and last but not least the grammar and spelling of the site's content.

Unfortunately for us, almost all of these things can be faked. But more often than not, we're on autopilot to look for those three markers of legitimacy. If we see bad spelling and grammar, we dismiss the site in question almost immediately (assuming we actually know the rules of grammar ourselves, which is a completely different story). But if the grammar and spelling are on point, we're more likely to stick around and read, and from that point on all bets are off.

I think that's really what's at play here. It's not so much that demand, per se, increases as a result of a well-written negative review--it's just that we're more likely to stick around on the site and read some more if we perceive an aura of legitimacy.

How do I even know that the blog this information was originally posted on was real or that the research was in fact real research, done properly? I don't. But the site seemed professional enough, and their links to outside articles and items seemed to indicate that these were real people who had done real research. But then again, maybe I've just been duped. Who knows for sure? Yeah... our brains are bizarre.

[Behind-The-Enemy-Lines blog]
(h/t Marginal Revolution, Freakonomics)