Peer Pressure in Voting?

Question

"Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good bling upvote!!".

The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already.

A kind of peer pressure that puts you on the spot to vote for a popular answer so you'd fit in the popular/hip thinking.

It's a mystery to see if most voters make it down to the bottom of the page to see new answers .

• Question : Is this phenomenon a norm these days?.
• Question : I am i correct in observing this phenomenon to be true?

Related

• How to discourage crowd-pleasing non-answers?
• Since when did Vote Count indicate the correct answer to the question?

Edit: Conversely,for example when a person with very high rep or seniority ( mention of their years of experience and such) posts an answer to the question.In some cases even though it may not be right or relevant their answers still get up votes.

• For reasons of respect to seniority.Simply for the trouble they have taken to post an answer
• Like you don't say no to your boss or your superior. say yes on the terms, OK it may not apply to this but it maybe useful in some other cases.
• Up votes for reasons of not appearing to be bad or stupid to ignore or be contrary the words of a senior person( rep count/experience/age) lest their post gets flamed or discourage others in not answering the question.

That is why you would notice rep builds up easier after a certain level at a slight extent maybe due to the above factors ,Besides The obvious volume and/or good quality answers

P.S : I am not trying to flame or offend any one with high rep

( as natural consequence of providing great answers over a period of time) or seniority.Neither do i dismiss the factors of tenure,diplomacy,strategic up/down voting, Rep W***ing.

Edit2: I am not claiming that this happens every time or for every up voted question or answer.

Answer 1

That's The Herd Instinct. I talk about this phenomenom in another (controversed) meta post.

Voting for already highly voted answers feel "safe". Therefore, consciously or unconsciously you do it. On rare occasion, you do the inverse, by rebellion ;)

Kate mention the impact of ordering which is real and IMHO is an unfair advantage for those who answer the question first.

I've observed that phenomenum many time. It is unlikely that better answers that come later get more vote than the inferior (and first) one.

That's why timezone also affect how much reputation you can get from your answers.

Answer 2

Because of the sort order, you can have a situation like this: read question. Formulate sorta-kinda answer, or immediately spot problem. Read first answer. Yes, that's right, upvote. Read second answer. Also right, upvote. Read third answer. Oh. Well I am kind of bored of this now so I think I will wander away.

This is why votes with the same score are shown in random order. It should even out over time, even it it's not even on one question.

Answer 3

I think you're worrying about a problem that doesn't exist. There's no peer pressure to vote for the highest voted answer. There's nobody holding a gun to a voter's head saying "vote highest or else".

You will see the highest voted answer get more votes because often it is the best answer. Either it goes into more details or provides a more sensible view than the others.

Crowd-pleasing non-answers are a different issue. Those posts aren't answers and they get votes on popularity. Those should be downvoted and/or flagged for removal, depending on the question. Some of the worse questions we get attract "cheap" answers -- a link to a popular comic or a joke. Those will always gather a lot of votes, but don't mistake them for being useful.

Answer 4

I'd be surprised if it was, its anonymous voting right?

I have the problem of forgetting to vote for good questions, only good answers.

Answer 5

Yes. I think this phenomenon is true, here and on other forums. It is probably the norm as well. This is the unintended consequence of SO/SE trying to be helpful to random people on the net. In promoting the highest rated answers to the top of the heap, they also implicitly encourage voting for the earliest answers.

A corollary to that is that if you want to rep-whore (not saying it's right), you'd best stick to unanswered questions and get a quick answer in before anyone else.

Answer 6

I don't think this phenomenon exists. This is simply because I can't think of a reason why someone would vote for an answer that isn't right, or why someone would vote for an answer that they haven't read, when voting is anonymous. You can't feel in with the in crowd, because no one else knows you've voted.

On the other hand, and this is something I have been guilty of, people probably do up vote answers from members who are somewhat famous (Jon Skeet, Pierre303, Anna Lear, etc.), regardless of if the answer is the best. This is because the vote is like showing support for them, rather than their answer.

The voter might not even read the answer if the person is famous enough (although this seems somewhat unlikely).

Answer 7

I really believe we're looking at the problem the wrong way. Answers that are upvoted because they're short, popular answers are generally the result of poorly-written questions that don't meet the guidelines for good, subjective questions. See Real Questions Have Answers for more details.

Most of these not-so-good questions are either closed, deleted, or converted to community wiki, so the upvotes don't matter for reputation.

Instead of trying to change the system, we need all of the 3000+ users to contribute to voting on questions that should be closed. If the questions can be improved, leave a comment encouraging the OP to improve the question, or try editing it yourself.

If you're a user that doesn't have the ability to close vote, you can still help by suggesting an edit, submitting a helpful comment, or flagging the post for moderator attention.

The more people we have in the community contributing to the moderation of this site, the less we'll see issues with the system itself and the more positive our experience here will be.

Answer 8

I'll admit that I was a little influenced by the amount of votes with accepting an answer for my first question but I moved on from being impressed by votes and badges etc...there's some great people on here but it's also relative to how much time you want to spend here.

Answer 9

I think more serious is the issue of peer pressure affecting what people feel they should write.

I often find myself defending Microsoft because the criticisms that people have against it are often so downright superstitious and insulting to the overall intelligence of the software community (can you believe people thought SQL Server was responsible for 300,000 cases of SQL injection attacks?), but it's hard to write an answer that might paint me an apologist -- especially with my real name.

And here's the really stupid case-in-point disclaimer that I feel pressured to write: I'm nonetheless just as frustrated at Microsoft overall as anyone else.

Answer 10

Here's a solution:

For a period of n-days (or hours), don't show any votes on answers and don't show the authors of the answers either, and randomize the order that the answers are displayed (except perhaps negative answers). That should give "late" good answers a better chance to rise to the top and avoid favoritism.

I'm not saying this is necessarily better but I'd be an interesting experiment.

Answer 11

Probably someone has said this already, but I don't think being at the top is the reason people vote for it as a good answer. I think being a good answer is the reason it's near the top. Voting is anonymous, and people often do not vote for a top answer if they disagree. Which does not, of course, mean that they vote for lower answers and pull them up.