— Shun-Yang Lee<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nSince the platforms are large, however, deciphering what is good information and what is lacking can be a challenge, and moderating every question and answer is unwieldy for site administrators. Most platforms have instituted voting systems where users can rate the helpfulness of an answer \u2013 often with a \u201cthumbs up or thumbs down\u201d or \u201cbest answer\u201d style of rating system \u2013 but those systems are subjective, depending entirely on the perception of individual users.<\/p>\n
In their study, the researchers sought to determine if a so-called \u201cpoliteness bias\u201d exists in these online conversations. If so, such a bias would affect the transfer of knowledge between users, potentially impacting the way we think about information sharing systems and the way that platforms choose to rank or evaluate user-generated content.<\/p>\n
The researchers analyzed data from Stack Exchange, and found that question askers were more receptive to answers that were perceived as polite, regardless of the quality of the information they actually contained. Question askers were more sensitive to the politeness of an answer than the general audience on the site, but question askers were also empowered to select and rate the \u201cbest answer\u201d that they received to their question. The selection of a \u201cbest answer,\u201d the researchers say, could leave other users reluctant to contribute and could lead to other, high-quality answers being buried in the conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnline communities will have to be mindful of the trade-off between having polite but not so useful answers, and useful but not so polite answers,\u201d says Lee. \u201cFor online communities whose objective is knowledge creation or aggregation, they should remind users that high quality answers are more important than politely written answers, because at the end of the day, the shared knowledge is what matters. In contrast, for online communities whose objective is socializing, polite posts can lead to more agreement and acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s implication for businesses that deal with consumer inquiries, Lee says, is that being polite can potentially improve customer satisfaction:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAs companies don’t always have the perfect or most satisfying response to customer inquiries, our study implies that as long as companies can communicate with customers in a polite way, the customers can still be satisfied with a not-so-perfect response.\u201d<\/p>\n
The study focused only on online platforms, where there are no visual or verbal cues \u2013 such as facial expressions or tone of voice \u2013 that would allow greater evaluation of an individual\u2019s politeness.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, the way a sentence is written becomes especially important,\u201d he says. \u201cDifferent people interpret politeness differently and therefore, there are no universal indicators of politeness.”<\/p>\n
Lee adds that the study suggests the reason for the politeness bias is people’s need to maintain face, so a rule of thumb should be to communicate with respect in order not to hurt the recipient’s self-image.<\/p>\n
He says further study will likely look at how politeness bias affects communications in contexts beyond online discussions, such as in business and education settings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new UConn study shows answers to questions asked on the internet are more likely to be seen as high quality if they are perceived as polite, regardless of whether the information is actually useful or helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":150619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076,1862,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2168],"class_list":["post-150562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-busn","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 02:47:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150562"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151023,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150562\/revisions\/151023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/150619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150562"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=150562"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=150562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}