Online ratings, internet reviews… these don’t always reveal the best choice, according to a new MIT study. A massive controlled experiment of web users found that such ratings are highly susceptible to irrational “herd behavior” — and that the herd can be manipulated. ScienceNOW reports.
Sometimes the crowd really is wiser than you, especially when it comes to the average of many people’s choices. But what if you’re judging something like quality?
According to one theory, the wisdom of the crowd still holds — measuring the aggregate of people’s opinions produces a stable, reliable value. Skeptics, however, argue that people’s opinions are easily swayed by those of others…
To test which hypothesis is true, you would need to manipulate huge numbers of people, exposing them to false information and determining how it affects their opinions.
A team led by MIT’s Sinan Aral conducted an experiment using a website that aggregates news stories, where users make comments and vote others up or down — like Reddit though he won’t say which exactly. He wanted to know how much the crowd influences the individual, and whether it can be controlled from outside.
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