Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

It may seem pointless to compare two products with the exact same average rating and total number of reviews without other review information. Now imagine a scenario in which the distribution of star ratings is also available to decision makers in addition to these two attributes. Will the decision still be uncertain as it is before or the distributions of stars will engender a preference towards one of the products? To answer this question, the current study used variability of star ratings as an approximation of a product’s distribution. The behavioral studies showed that participants exhibited distinctive choice patterns when the distribution of ratings was provided even when the average rating and total number of reviews were the same between two products involved in a comparison. A utility-based cognitive model was therefore developed to identify the underlying mechanism as to why people chose the way they did.