[LINK] SMBC on Confirmation Bias

I like and support the idea, but I'm not confident that it should be the default (Edit: Or am I?). I think threads around a week old still get comments fairly often (correct me if I'm wrong) and this might make it a bit harder for new posts to get exposure. I'm also not confident that it shouldn't be the default though, and I'm thinking of reasons it should as I type this.

1) People that visit the discussion page (for the first time and otherwise) will see active conversations. 2) Interesting things will stay at the top longer. 3) No need for new posts to bring new information to past posts (already mentioned).

I don't feel like deleting this comment, but I think these benefits outweigh the problems I mentioned earlier. It would make it a bit less "blog-like" though (it is a bit forum-like as it is, though, and this doesn't appear to be a problem).

It's worth noting that the experimental setup involved putting spoilers into the opening of an unfamiliar story - that is, the subjects didn't know they were being spoiled. Suggests that if people enjoy stories less after learning spoilers, it may be their own fault (akin to all the studies on wine and perception).

I don't think that's the issue; if you look at the graphs, the standard deviation is tiny compared to the variability between stories, and in some the spoilers/no-spoilers don't even overlap. The stats:

For all three experiments, analyses of variance revealed a significant effect of condition. (In order to control for variability between stories, we analyzed the data by comparing different versions of the same story.) Subjects significantly preferred spoiled over unspoiled stories in the case of both the ironic- twist stories (6.20 vs. 5.79), p = .013, Cohen’s d = 0.18, and the mysteries (7.29 vs. 6.60), p = .001, d = 0.34. The evocative stories were appreciated less overall, likely because of their more expressly literary aims, but subjects again significantly preferred spoiled over unspoiled versions (5.50 vs. 5.03), p = .019, d = 0.22. In all three story types, incorporating spoiler texts into stories had no effect on how much they were liked, ps > .4. Subjects also did not indicate in their free responses that they found these altered beginnings out of place or jarring.

This is, I think, a general problem with many of the studies we rely on. We learn a lot about the averages, but often I find that useless - I want to know more in-depth information about the subgroups, outliers, etc. As seen here and in the linked article, these same studies are often misinterpreted for this reason. Perhaps it's worth a post? Especially if someone is more familiar with the pertinent methodology than I.