Nudge for Deliberativeness: How Interface Features Influence Online Discourse

Abstract

Cognitive load is a significant challenge to users for being deliberative. Interface design has been used to mitigate this cognitive state. This paper surveys literature on the anchoring effect, partitioning effect and point-of-choice effect, based on which we propose three interface nudges, namely, the word-count anchor, partitioning text fields, and reply choice prompt. We then conducted a 2×2×2 factorial experiment with 80 participants (10 for each condition), testing how these nudges affect deliberativeness. The results showed a significant positive impact of the word-count anchor. There was also a significant positive impact of the partitioning text fields on the word count of response. The reply choice prompt showed a surprisingly negative affect on the quantity of response, hinting at the possibility that the reply choice prompt induces a fear of evaluation, which could in turn dampen the willingness to reply.

Keywords
Nudges
online discussion
portioning text fields
word count
reply choice prompt
deliberativeness
Authors
Sanju Menon
National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Weiyu Zhang
National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Simon T. Perrault
Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore
DOI

10.1145/3313831.3376646

Paper URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376646

Conference: CHI 2020

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2020.acm.org/)

Session: Biases & the effects of interfaces

Paper session
316B MAUI
5 items in this session
2020-04-27 16:00:00
2020-04-27 17:15:00
Japanese summary
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