Consumers may enjoy reading funny or sarcastic product reviews online, but do they influence their purchasing decisions?

That is the query of my colleagues Susan Mudambi, David Schuff, Ermira Zifla and I desired to respond with our recent Research on “pseudo-reviews”.” By this, I don't mean fake reviews which might be designed to mislead consumers. Pseudo-reviews, which could possibly be written by anyone, usually tend to entertain or wink on the reader and infrequently say something true concerning the product.

We have found that the reply to this query is yes, but not entirely unequivocally. The quirky nature of those reviews captivates consumers and piques their interest within the product. An actual-life example of this was in 2009, when hundreds of reviews were posted on Amazon.com for a T-shirt with an image of three wolves howl on the moonThe humorous, exaggerated and clearly fabricated reviews went viral and the T-shirt became one in all the best-selling items in Amazon's clothing range.

However, we’ve found that humorous reviews also increase consumers' uncertainty about whether the product is suitable for them and due to this fact make them less willing to purchase it.

We reached our conclusions after conducting two separate online experiments by which we asked about 450 participants to read a series of product reviews based on real Amazon reviews. Some of those were authentic, others were modified to sound funny or sarcastic, and there have been positive and negative examples of every. We then asked participants about their level of amusement, uncertainty concerning the product, and likelihood that they might buy the product.

We found that a humorous review increases a client's sense of amusement and makes them more prone to purchase a product than in the event that they had read a real and more serious review. We also found that a funny review can have the other effect by increasing consumer uncertainty, for instance when the product is a posh item like a flat-screen TV.

In other words, it's likely that pseudo-reviews can increase sales by adding entertainment value in certain situations, reminiscent of impulse purchases. But they will hurt sales when a product requires a more detailed evaluation and the humorous reviews confuse relatively than inform potential buyers.

“Can you name the truck that has four-wheel drive, smells like steak and seats 35?”

In 1998, The Simpsons joked in regards to the Canyonero, an SUV so big they were obviously joking. At the time, it was absurd to think anyone would drive something that was “12 yards long, two lanes wide, and 65 tons of American pride.”

In 2024, this joke shouldn’t be removed from reality.

And our reality is that more pedestrians and cyclists are being killed on US roads than at any time within the last 45 years – over 1,000 cyclists and seven,500 pedestrians in 2022 alone.

Vehicle size is an enormous a part of this problem. A recent article by urban economist Justin Tyndall found that a rise within the front end height of about 10 centimeters increases the likelihood of a fatal pedestrian accident by 22%For female pedestrians and folks over 65 years of age, the chance increases by 31%, and for kids by 81%.

It's hard to argue against physics, so it's somewhat logical responsible cars for the rising variety of road deaths. In fact, Tyndall estimates that a cyclist hit by a pickup truck fairly than a automotive is 291% more more likely to die.

Yet automotive manufacturers have long claimed that if everyone simply obeyed the principles of the road, nobody would die. The size of the vehicle is irrelevant to this claim.

My discipline, Traffic engineeringis analogous. We underestimate our role in perpetuating poor outcomes and the role that higher engineering can play in creating safer communities and streets.

Millions of road deaths

How bad are the negative consequences? The United States has been tracking the variety of car-related traffic deaths since 1899. As a rustic, we now have reached the brink 1 million deaths in total in 1953, 2 million in 1975, and three million in 1998. While data from recent years has not yet been released, I estimate that the whole variety of traffic fatalities within the United States will surpass 4 million sometime within the spring of 2024.

How a lot of them are pedestrians and cyclists? The analysts were unable to differentiate between the variety of pedestrians and cyclists killed. within the early yearsbut based on subsequent trends, I estimate that about 930,000 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed by cars within the United States.

How a lot of these deaths will we blame on big cars or bad roads? The answer is: only a few.

As I show in my recent book, “Killed by a traffic engineer: The illusion that our transport system is based on science must be destroyed”, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration describes the error of road users as “critical reason” behind 94% of accidents, injuries and deaths.

The crash data proves this.

Police investigate accidents and inevitably look to find out which road users – including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists – are primarily at fault. This is straightforward because in almost every accident, the road user's fault appears to be the apparent problem.

This approach helps insurance firms determine who has to pay. It also helps automotive manufacturers and traffic engineers justify all these deaths. Everyone – except the families and friends of those 4 million victims – goes to sleep at night with the great feeling that badly behaving road users just must be higher taught or higher enforced.

But the mistakes made by road users are only the tip of the iceberg of the issue.

Who creates dangerous roads?

When traffic engineers excessively wide road that appears more like a highwayand a speeding driver is involved in an accident in Canyonero, the motive force will probably be accused of speeding in the following accident data.

When traffic engineers poor zebra crossings with large gapsand someone crosses the road on a red light and is hit by the speeding Canyonero driver, the official accident report will blame one or each of those road users.

And when automotive manufacturers construct gigantic vehicles which might be easily double the speed limit and fill them with annoying touchscreensaccident data will still blame road users for nearly every bad thing that happens.

These are the sorts of systemic conditions that result in many so-called road user errors. But should you look beneath the surface, it becomes clear that many human errors represent the standard, rational behavior of typical, rational road users given the transportation systems and vehicle options we offer them with.

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that our underlying crash data gives a free pass to everyone but road users themselves. Everyone wants a data-driven approach to road safety, but today's standard view of crash data absolves automakers, insurance firms, and policymakers who set vehicle safety standards of responsibility for the rise in size of those ever-larger cars and light-weight trucks.

It also absolves traffic engineers, planners and politicians of the blame for making a transportation system during which, for many Americans, The only good selection to get from A to B is the automotive.

Understanding road behaviour

Car manufacturers wish to sell cars and earn a living. And if larger SUVs seem safer to potential customers and at the identical time far more profitableIt is straightforward to see how the interaction between road users and automotive manufacturers – whose decisions are apparently rational – has developed into an arms race in terms of SUVs.

Even if these vehicles less safety for pedestrians, cyclists and passengers of oncoming vehiclesThis aspect is ignored in the present data-driven approach to road safety.

This cannot all be fixed without delay. But in the event that they proceed as before, automotive manufacturers and traffic engineers will proceed waste money At Campaigns responsible the victims or billboards high above the road, urging drivers to watch the road.

A greater start line can be to revamp the United States' supposedly data-driven approach to traffic safety by reinventing our understanding of the crash data on which it’s all based.

The secret is to ask why. Why did these road users behave as they did? Why did they not follow the principles that were set for them? Bad road user behaviour shouldn’t be excused, but should you dig slightly beneath the surface of the accident data, a really different story emerges.

Finding out which road user made the most important mistake could also be helpful for law enforcement and insurance firms, but it surely does little to assist traffic engineers, planners, politicians or automotive manufacturers determine what they’ll do higher. Worse, it prevents them from realising that they is likely to be doing something improper.

Given the deep divisions on college campuses—most recently over the conflict in Gaza and Israel—many observers fear that universities usually are not places where students can discuss divisive issues with individuals who disagree with them. In my research and teaching, I actually have found that students do indeed wish to have difficult conversations across divides, but they need the support of school and other facilitators to make those conversations successful.

Since early 2017, I actually have observed events on college campuses where students are brought along with peers with whom they disagree to speak about politics. In these sessions, facilitators ask students guiding questions that help them understand their peers' political opinions.

I conducted follow-up interviews with the scholars a couple of weeks later and, if possible, three years later.

My goal is to know what is occurring in these conversations. I need to know: Who is learning what from whom? Who is satisfied or frustrated and why? And what does all this mean for American democracy?

From the conversations I observed, I learned that six practices contribute to a greater experience for all students.

1. Establish standards and expectations

When people speak about setting conversational norms, they often assume that they try to prescribe language rules. But setting norms does something higher than following rules: it allows students to develop a way of their very own and others' hopes and fears about conversation.

In my experience, starting the session with questions like, “What are you hoping to get out of this conversation?”, “What are you most concerned about about the conversation?”, “What are you willing to contribute?”, and “What are you hoping to get out of it?” can assist show students that they’re already revealing greater than expected.

Furthermore, this discussion inevitably results in the query, “How can we interact in ways that are most likely to help us achieve our goals?” Students typically volunteer their very own guidelines, corresponding to assuming good faith, objecting to an individual's idea moderately than attacking it, truthfully communicating when and why they feel hurt, and listening rigorously.

2. Let students tell their personal stories

By starting with students' personal stories, the barrier to entry is lowered, allowing students who usually are not policy experts to contribute. Students feel that their direct experiences are being heard. And it enables what I actually have found to be probably the most profound final result of the dialogue: the change in how students feel about one another.

For example, consider the “Can we talk” Campus Dialogue Series, which brings together ideologically diverse students for two-hour sessions by which moderators pose a series of questions for college kids to ask one another. Sessions began with questions corresponding to “How was politics discussed in the home you grew up in?” and “What is your earliest political memory?” before moving on to questions on students’ substantive views on relevant issues.

The focus of those sessions, which I observed at colleges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey through the 2017-2018 academic yr, is to extend students' understanding of one another's views and the way they form.

If the dialogue is to concentrate on a particular issue, corresponding to gun control, abortion, or the war in Israel and Gaza, appropriate questions will be asked, corresponding to: “When did you first hear about this issue?” “What impact did it have on you at the time?” or “What is it about this issue that prompts you to have this conversation?”

3. Encourage curiosity

Students often fear that in the event that they don’t attempt to discredit views they’ll find yourself confirming those views. Follow-up interviews I conducted three years later When she participated in a dialogue session, I discovered that the scholars who eventually modified their political opinions were prompted to accomplish that by sincere and non-threatening questions. “I remember one girl asking me, 'If you say you believe that, why did you vote that way?' I've been asking myself that question ever since,” admitted one student whose political opinions had modified significantly within the years between our first and second interview. Most importantly, she felt questioned and never attacked.

Asking questions will be encouraged throughout a conversation by setting aside time for it in each round, or by giving instructions corresponding to, “Think of a question you've always wanted to ask someone who thinks differently than you on this topic. Ask it now.”

4. Address differences of opinion

One risk of emphasizing personal experiences at the start is that students are hesitant to voice their disagreements. They wish to be supportive, and it’s difficult to argue with personal experiences. However, in my research, I actually have found that students ended with the deepest respect for one another after they realized the character of their differences.

By clarifying what their differences were about, students were capable of see that their differences weren’t attributable to ignorance, malice, or madness on the opposite side, but to legitimate differences in views about what is nice and possible.

After students have shared their views on topics and asked one another questions out of curiosity, they will be instructed to ask one another questions corresponding to, “What is the reason for our disagreement?” and “What is really important to me and to you, and is it the same? And if not, why not?”

5. Plan the following steps together

Students are frequently happiest after they can work towards a particular goal. The most ambitious of those will be real collaborative projects.

For example Sorenson Institutean institute for political leadership on the University of Virginia, convenes dialogues At the top, students develop a proposal for the Virginia State Legislature on a particular issue, corresponding to gun control.

Even one-time conversations can result in conclusions about what students could do in a different way on social media, on their campuses, and of their families. When I followed up with them, I learned that many students had already implemented these changes, and located that folks were changing their very own behavior in response. One student found that her uncle began to read and reflect on the articles she sent him. Another student found that fellow students in her political science class who had been dismissive of her up to now became more respectful when she expressed her views and looked as if it would take heed to her more genuinely.

6. Debriefing

Some students will thrive in these conversations, while others will struggle. In my research, I actually have found that students whose rights are threatened by opposing policy proposals understandably struggle probably the most. However, these students' experiences will be enhanced by a follow-up debriefing with a trusted mentor.

For example, one student who identifies as queer felt shaken after a discussion with fellow students who opposed her right to marry. But the next meeting with a professor helped her feel empowered by the conversation and equipped with latest knowledge that can help her fight for a more just society.

Listening to protests

Dialogue can deepen divisions when it’s presented because the only appropriate type of political communication, thereby silencing individuals who don’t take part in these conversations. Students needs to be encouraged to take heed to messages which might be conveyed in other ways. For example, they will study protest movements – including current, contemporary movements – and skim the texts posted by activists who organize these movements.

It is very important to convey to students that dialogue alone cannot solve all the issues of today's democracy. Protests, boycotts and other types of collective motion are also vital.