Are 5-Star Ratings Harming Your Digital Wellbeing?
5-star ratings are everywhere. From the electric toothbrush you’re contemplating buying on Amazon to the Uber driver that gives you a ride to the airport. These tiny symbols of quality and trust, so easily accessible via our smartphones, are a handy shortcut that have greased the skids for almost any online transaction.
However, there is a side-effect to relying on the black-boxed algorithmic weighting that determines the 1–5 rating. No more delightful experiences.
Paradox of Predictability
By relying on rating stars, you’re reducing the chance of purchasing something that could provide you a negative experience. No one wants to throw good money at low quality stuff. Makes perfect sense.
However, let’s say you are looking for someone to cut your hair and you turn to Yelp to help you find a highly rated establishment. Now, if you receive top-notch service at this 5-star rated barbershop — you might enjoy the experience, but it’d be completely expected.
A study from Emory university revealed that receiving positive experiences at unpredictable moments tends to create a greater happiness effect than if it were predictable! In other words, just knowing that the barbershop was 5-star rated may have cheated you from receiving a natural dopamine rush — and transcending from joy to delight. It also left your brain wanting more…
How 5-Star Ratings Are Making Us Less Skeptical
In fact, our brains are naturally wired to crave these intermittent but unpredictable pleasurable responses. By relying so immensely on external rating systems before making decisions, we’ve outsourced our ability to form expectations and judgement. Our heuristics for skepticism and risk-taking are impaired, leaving us vulnerable to suggestion or advertisements. We’re optimized ourselves to receive many average experiences at the expense of living through a few great ones!
How to Reclaim Your Delight
Before our reliance on smartphones to alert us to the ratings about nearly everything at every moment, we satiated our need for unanticipated pleasure by engaging in activities where we could be surprised. For instance, going on blind dates that hadn’t already been swiped left. Trying restaurants based on the menu posted outside or shopping at stores based on their whimsical name.
With an increasing number of people looking at options to re-balance their relationship with their digital surroundings, a digital detox isn’t the only solution. It is important to revisit so many of these omnipresent symbols of digital transformation such as the 5-star ratings and to reexamine their use in our lives.
Taking steps to rebalance
Here are a couple tips for breaking free from the 5-star rating trap:
Lean into your instincts. Don’t just rely on ratings to make decisions as a shortcut. Take some time to read reviews and compare options before you buy something.
Seek out unexpected experiences. Try new things and don’t be afraid to take risks. The best experiences are often the ones that you didn’t plan for.
Scroll By Choice is helping employers and individuals take sustainable steps to regain control over their digital habits. Using a proprietary Choice Score we go beyond screen time to understand what exhausts vs energizes. Then, through a series of practical strategies grounded in innate human attributes — users learn how to engage with technology in a way that boosts their digital wellbeing. Additional information is available at learnmore@scrollbychoice.com