Discover more from Overcoming Bias
We choose many products mainly as a way to affiliate with its other customers – we often care more about this affiliation than about personally enjoying the product! My evidence for this outrageous claim? Reading a negative online review by a high status person makes us more likely to buy the product:
In our recent … paper “Towards a Theory Model for Product Search”, we noticed that demand for a hotel increases if the 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. (more; HT Slate via Buck Farmer)
You might know that your mind is capable of both truth-oriented investigation and of delusory pursuit of other goals, but you might think that you can roughly tell when you are in which mode. But if you thought that a negative review makes you like a product less, well then you are more deluded than you realize.
Who Beats What
I'm another person who seeks out well written negative reviews when buying products, but I think there might a hidden irrationality there as well,- that of believing every story must have two sides and that nothing could be that perfect. Reading a trustworthy negative review dispels the niggling feeling that there must be some hidden flaw in the product, since unlike a well written positive review they aren't trying to justify their purchase. So it's a kind of "better the devil you know" phenomenon, only even more absurd than usual.
Negative reviews are very useful (in helping me make a favorable choice) if the review is detailed but picky on dimensions I don't care about.
For example, someone who isn't much of an ethnic foodie might go to a restaurant which said:
"Elegant presentation, ok prices, and good service, but shockingly banal food. I thought the attempt to serve spicy kidneys on toast with ice cream was a flawed afterthought but I suppose it's ok if you just want a good hamburger and a somewhat pretentious milkshake. Don't try to order wine."
Or conversely, I've seen reviews of very good but unusual Chinese restaurants panned by people looking for moo goo gai pan, chow mein, or sweet & sour pork who aren't happy. In those cases, the negatives are clear positives.