Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When purchasing products online, often two products may have similar mean ratings and numbers of reviews, but suchapparent similarities may hide important differences. Sometimes, the distribution of star ratings is also available to decisionmakers in addition to these two attributes. Will the decision still be as undifferentiated as before or will the distributionsof stars engender a preference towards one of the products? To answer this question, the current study manipulated thedisplayed variability of ratings for choices with the same average rating. The behavioral studies showed that participantsexhibited distinctive choice patterns when the distribution of ratings was provided even when the average rating andtotal number of reviews were the same between two compared products. A utility-based cognitive model was thereforedeveloped to identify the underlying mechanism as to why people chose the way they did.