When people have the option to “like” an article they encounter online, they spend less time actually reading the text, a new study suggests.
In a laboratory experiment, researchers found that people spent about 7 percent less time reading articles on controversial topics if they had the opportunity to upvote or downvote them than if there wasn’t any interactive element.
The finding was strongest when an article agreed with the reader’s point of view.
The results suggest that the capability to interact with internet content may alter how we consume it, said Daniel Sude, that led the study while earning a doctoral degree in communication at The Ohio State University.
“When people are voting whether they like or dislike an article, they’re expressing themselves. They are focused on their own thoughts and less on the content in the article,” Sude said.
“It is like the old phrase, ‘If you’re talking, you’re not listening.’ People were talking back to the articles without listening to what they had to say.”
In another finding, people’s existing views on contentious topics like gun control or abortion became more powerful after voting on articles which agreed with their views, even if they spent time studying them.
“Just having the ability to like an article you agreed with was enough to amplify your attitude,” said study co-author Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, professor of communication at Ohio State.
“You didn’t need to read the article carefully, you didn’t have to learn anything new, but you are more committed to what you already believed.”
The study, also co-authored by former Ohio State doctoral student George Pearson, was published online in the journal Computers in Human Behavior and will appear in the print edition.
The study involved 235 college students. Before the study, the researchers measured their views on four contentious topics used in the experiment: abortion, welfare benefits, gun control and affirmative action.
Participants were subsequently shown four variations of an internet news website made for the study, each on one of the contentious topics. Each webpage showed headlines and first paragraphs for four articles, two having a conservative slant and two with a liberal slant. Participants may click on the headlines to read the full stories.
Two versions of the sites had a banner that said,”Voting Currently allowed for this topic,” and each article had an arrow or down arrow which participants can click to express their view.
The other two websites had a banner that stated,”Voting now disabled for this particular topic.”
Participants were given three minutes to browse each website as they desired, though they were not told about the time limitation. The investigators quantified the time participants spent on each individual story and whether they voted when they had the chance.
As anticipated, for each site, participants spent more time studying posts that agreed with their views (about 1.5 minutes) than conflicting viewpoints (less than a moment ).
Nevertheless, they spent approximately 12 seconds less reading the articles they consented with if they were able to vote.
Additionally, people voted on about 12 percent of posts that they did not choose to read, the study revealed.
“Rather than increasing engagement with website content, having the ability to interact may actually distract from it,” Sude said.
The investigators measured the participants’ perspectives on the four topics again after they read the sites to find out if their attitudes had changed at all.
Results revealed that if participants were not given the option to “like”, time spent reading articles that agreed with their original perspectives strengthened those perspectives. The more time they spent, the more powerful their views became.
When participants had the option to “like”, their voting behavior was as influential as their reading time. Even if they ceased reading and upvoted, their attitudes became stronger.
“It is important that people’s views still became stronger by just having the opportunity to vote, Knobloch-Westerwick said.
“When they had the opportunity to vote on the articles, their attitudes were getting more extreme with limited or no input from the articles themselves. They were in an echo chamber of one.”
Sude said there is a much better way to interact with internet news.
“Don’t just click the like button. Read the article and leave thoughtful comments that are more than just a positive or negative rating,” he said.
“Say why you liked or disliked the article. The way we express ourselves is important and can influence the way we think about an issue.”
Related Journal Article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563220303198?via%3Dihub