Do Online Voting Patterns Reflect Evolved Features of Human Cognition? An Exploratory Empirical Investigation

Online votes or ratings can assist internet users in evaluating the credibility and appeal of the information which they encounter. For example, aggregator websites such as Reddit allow users to up-vote submitted content to make it more prominent, and down-vote content to make it less prominent. Here we argue that decisions over what to up- or down-vote may be guided by evolved features of human cognition. We predict that internet users should be more likely to up-vote content that others have also up-voted (social influence), content that has been submitted by particularly liked or respected users (model-based bias), content that constitutes evolutionarily salient or relevant information (content bias), and content that follows group norms and, in particular, prosocial norms. 489 respondents from the online social voting community Reddit rated the extent to which they felt different traits influenced their voting. Statistical analyses confirmed that norm-following and prosociality, as well as various content biases such as emotional content and originality, were rated as important motivators of voting. Social influence had a smaller effect than expected, while attitudes towards the submitter had little effect. This exploratory empirical investigation suggests that online voting communities can provide an important test-bed for evolutionary theories of human social information use, and that evolved features of human cognition may guide online behaviour just as it guides behaviour in the offline world.

在线投票与评分可助力互联网用户评估其所接触信息的可信度与吸引力。例如，聚合类网站红迪（Reddit）允许用户对提交的内容进行点赞以提升其曝光度，或点踩以降低其曝光度。本研究提出，用户进行点赞或点踩的决策，可能受到人类认知进化特征的驱动。我们预测，互联网用户更倾向于对以下几类内容进行点赞：一是已获得其他用户点赞的内容（社会影响，social influence），二是由广受喜爱或尊敬的用户提交的内容（基于模型的偏差，model-based bias），三是具备进化显著性或进化相关性的内容（内容偏差，content bias），四是符合群体规范尤其是亲社会规范（prosocial norms）的内容。来自在线社交投票社区红迪（Reddit）的489名受访者，评估了各类影响其投票行为的特质的重要程度。统计分析结果证实，遵从规范与亲社会性，以及情绪性内容、原创性等各类内容偏差因素，均被受访者视为投票行为的重要驱动因素。社会影响的效应较预期更小，而对提交者的态度对投票行为的影响则微乎其微。此项探索性实证研究表明，在线投票社区可为人类社交信息使用的进化理论提供重要的试验平台，同时人类认知的进化特征同样会引导在线行为，正如其引导线下行为一般。