ABSTRACT

Research has shown that user comments influence peoples’ perceptions, with recent evidence suggesting that comment presentation order (e.g., whether comments are presented prior to/after the commented item) may alter the strength of comments’ effects. Considering the implications of this finding for content producers, the informed design of experiments, and the interpretation of prior studies, this study aimed (1) to replicate a recent study on comment presentation order, and (2) to identify why (negative) comments presented after an article seem to have stronger effects on users’ perceptions. A pre-registered experiment with 325 participants provided inconclusive evidence of the predicted presentation order effect and did not allow for further investigations of the underlying reasons. Overall, the findings highlight the ongoing need for studying the conditions under which effects of user comments occur.

摘要

研究表明，用户评论会影响人们的看法，最近的证据表明评论呈现顺序（例如，评论是否出现在评论项目之前/之后）可能会改变评论效果的强度。考虑到这一发现对内容制作者的影响、实验的知情设计以及对先前研究的解释，本研究旨在 (1) 复制最近关于评论呈现顺序的研究，以及 (2) 确定为什么（负面）评论在一篇文章之后呈现似乎对用户的感知有更大的影响。一项包含 325 名参与者的预注册实验为预测的演示顺序效应提供了不确定的证据，并且不允许进一步调查根本原因。总体而言，研究结果强调了研究用户评论影响发生的条件的持续需要。