Understanding Negativity Bias

Is this story familiar?

You decide to buy something new – a hair dryer, for example. You’ve done your research; you understand the product specifications, you know what to expect in terms of cost, you’ve examined the competition. For the most part, you’ve made up your mind. The only thing left is to see what other people are saying about it. You saunter casually online to read a few consumer reviews, and then…WHAM! You’re hit with a wall of negativity.

“This is the WORST THING EVER!!! Don’t waste your money on this piece of crap!” -Cyndi S. from Buffalo, NY

“I bought this hair dryer thinking it was a good investment, but the first day I used it I suffered horrible 3rd degree burns!! I want my money back!” – Armand

“I USED THIS THING FOR TWO WEEKS AND NOW IT DOESN’T WORK RIGHT!!!!!!!!! BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!” – Anonymous

Chances are, if you go to a review site to see how others are rating a product, you’re going to see 150 comments similar to the three above – venomous, vitriolic, unhelpful – and only ten or twelve positive messages. Why is this? Why are you so much more likely to see bad reviews?

The answer is simple, actually. The whole phenomenon is due to a little thing called negativity bias.

What Is Negativity Bias?

Hara Estroff Marano, a writer for Psychology Today, puts negativity bias succinctly: “Nastiness just makes a bigger impact on our brains.”

So there you have it. As a species, humans are hardwired to focus on the bad aspects of life and to gripe, moan, and complain about the things that go wrong.

That also comes into play when reviewing consumer products …

Negativity Bias In Product Reviews

Let’s return to our hair dryer example to see how negativity bias plays out in real life.

A hundred and fifty negative comments about one product seem genuinely alarming until you realize that the hair dryer company has been in business for 60 years and has sold about a million units of the model in question. So 999,000+ people have used the hair dryer and A) liked it just fine or B) had a few minor problems that didn’t warrant a complaint.

The people who are complaining, who actually cared about the issue enough to stop what they were doing, sit down, and type out a nasty review, are still in the minority by far.

What does this mean for you as a reader of product reviews?

Well, the bad news is that you probably aren’t going to get a fair look at how well the product works or how safe/reliable it actually is. Our shared human instinct to focus on the negative has led usually only unsatisfied people to post reviews, and now you are left to sort through loads and loads of bad messages and only a few positive ones. The overwhelming negative feedback will start to influence your brain. Wow, this product really is terrible, you’ll think. People really seem to hate it! I better get something different.

Long story short, you end up avoiding a hair dryer that would have suited you just fine.

Negativity Bias & Merchant Maverick

Here at Merchant Maverick, we specialize in researching, testing, and rating software vendors and telling you about the best merchant account providers. We spend a lot of time thinking about which companies to recommend and don’t take our jobs lightly.

After all, if we make a bad recommendation and you end up with a POS system you are unhappy with or a clunky little accounting suite, everyone loses. You have to find something else that will serve your needs better, and we lose credibility in the industry. Because our reputation is on the line, when we give a company 5 stars, we really mean it.

But no matter how hard we try, sometimes negativity bias is going to rear its ugly head.

Often, a new reader will check out one of our reviews, read what we have to say about the product, and see that we’ve rated it highly. They start to feel great about our recommendation, and everything seems copacetic. Until they check out the comments section, that is.

Did they have a bad experience? Yes. Are they justified in feeling frustrated and angry? Again, yes. Is our overall evaluation of the company in question, therefore, flawed? No.

Now, there are times when we rate a product highly and then start to receive a huge amount of negative feedback. If a whole lot of people are voicing dissatisfaction about a specific issue, then there is probably something very wrong going on. In such situations, we look into the problem and often reevaluate our initial rating.

The Takeaway: Finding a Way Around the Issue

It would be easy, after an in-depth discussion of negativity bias like this, to simply say: don’t look at consumer reviews – they aren’t reliable. But that’s not really true. Online comments and consumer reviews can be very useful tools if you bear a few key concepts in mind at all times:

• Happy consumers usually don’t comment unless they are good-natured or incentivized to leave feedback. A lack of good feedback, then, is not an automatic red flag.
• People with genuine gripes will voice specific complaints. Avoid giving credence to negative comments that are vague.
• Negativity bias or not, if you see a large number of complaints about the same issue, there is probably something to it.

Whether you’re buying a hair dryer or investing in a complex point of sale solution, you’re going to want to do your homework before you take the leap. Accounting for negativity bias in the reviews you read will help you make a better, more informed decision.