The Illusion of Authenticity in Online Reviews: Truth Bias and the Role of Valence

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.0339

References

  • Ananthakrishnan UM, Li B, Smith MD (2020) A tangled web: Should online review portals display fraudulent reviews? Inform. Systems Res. 31(3):950–971.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Anderson ET, Simester DI (2014) Reviews without a purchase: Low ratings, loyal customers, and deception. J. Marketing Res. 51(3):249–269.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Babić Rosario A, Sotgiu F, De Valck K, Bijmolt THA (2016) The effect of electronic word of mouth on sales: A meta-analytic review of platform, product, and metric factors. J. Marketing Res. 53(3):297–318.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bond CF, DePaulo BM (2006) Accuracy of deception judgments. Personality Soc. Psych. Rev. 10(3):214–234.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Bond CF, DePaulo BM (2008) Individual differences in judging deception: Accuracy and bias. Psych. Bull. 134(4):477–492.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Chevalier JA, Mayzlin D (2006) The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book reviews. J. Marketing Res. 43(3):345–354.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Datassential (2019) Campus dining isn’t what it used to be. Accessed May 6, 2025, https://datassential.com/resource/campus-dining-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/.Google Scholar
  • DePaulo BM, Charlton K, Cooper H, Lindsay JJ, Muhlenbruck L (1997) The accuracy-confidence correlation in the detection of deception. Personality Soc. Psych. Rev. 1(4):346–357.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • DePaulo BM, Lindsay JJ, Malone BE, Muhlenbruck L, Charlton K, Cooper H (2003) Cues to deception. Psych. Bull. 129(1):74–118.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Ekman P, O’Sullivan M (1991) Who can catch a liar? Amer. Psychologist 46(9):913–920.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Evans JSB, Stanovich KE (2013) Dual-process theories of higher cognition: Advancing the debate. Perspect. Psych. Sci. 8(3):223–241.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Faul F, Erdfelder E, Buchner A, Lang A-G (2009) Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behav. Res. Methods 41(4):1149–1160.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Feldman JM, Lynch JG (1988) Self-generated validity and other effects of measurement on belief, attitude, intention, and behavior. J. Appl. Psych. 73(3):421–435.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Forrest JA, Feldman RS (2000) Detecting deception and judge’s involvement: Lower task involvement leads to better lie detection. Personality Soc. Psych. Bull. 26(1):118–125.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gambetti A, Han Q (2023) Dissecting AI-generated fake reviews: Detection and analysis of GPT-based restaurant reviews on social media. Internat. Conf. Inform. Systems (ICIS, Hyderabad).Google Scholar
  • Gilbert DT (1991) How mental systems believe. Amer. Psychologist 46(2):107–119.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Gössling S, Hall CM, Andersson A-C (2018) The manager’s dilemma: A conceptualization of online review manipulation strategies. Current Issues Tourism 21(5):484–503.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Halevy R, Shalvi S, Verschuere B (2014) Being honest about dishonesty: Correlating self-reports and actual lying. Human Comm. Res. 40(1):54–72.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Ismagilova E, Slade EL, Rana NP, Dwivedi YK (2020) The effect of electronic word of mouth communications on intention to buy: A meta-analysis. Inform. Systems Frontiers 22(5):1203–1226.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Kahneman D (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York).Google Scholar
  • Kapner S (2019) Black Friday shoppers: Beware of fake five-star reviews. Wall Street J. (November 28), https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-friday-shoppers-beware-of-fake-five-star-reviews-11574937001.Google Scholar
  • Kumar N, Venugopal D, Qiu L, Kumar S (2018) Detecting review manipulation on online platforms with hierarchical supervised learning. J. Management Inform. Systems 35(1):350–380.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lappas T, Sabnis G, Valkanas G (2016) The impact of fake reviews on online visibility: A vulnerability assessment of the hotel industry. Inform. Systems Res. 27(4):940–961.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Lei Z, Yin D, Zhang H (2023) Positive or negative reviews? Consumers’ selective exposure in seeking and evaluating online reviews. J. Assoc. Inform. Systems 24(4):1162–1183.Google Scholar
  • Lei Z, Yin D, Zhang H (2025) Deliberative or automatic: Disentangling the dual processes behind the persuasive power of online word-of-mouth. MIS Quart. 49(1):331–346.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Lei Z, Yin D, Mitra S, Zhang H (2022) Swayed by the reviews: Disentangling the effects of average ratings and individual reviews in online word-of-mouth. Production Oper. Management. 31(6):2393–2411.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Levine TR (2014) Truth-default theory (TDT): A theory of human deception and deception detection. J. Language Soc. Psych. 33(4):378–392.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Levine TR (2019) Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Levine TR, Kim RK, Blair JP (2010) (In)accuracy at detecting true and false confessions and denials: An initial test of a projected motive model of veracity judgments. Human Comm. Res. 36(1):82–102.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Levine TR, Park HS, McCornack SA (1999) Accuracy in detecting truths and lies: Documenting the “veracity effect.” Comm. Monographs 66(2):125–144.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Levine TR, Ali MV, Dean M, Abdulla RA, Garcia-Ruano K (2016) Toward a pan-cultural typology of deception motives. J. Intercultural Comm. Res. 45(1):1–12.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Liu X, Lee D, Srinivasan K (2019) Large-scale cross-category analysis of consumer review content on sales conversion leveraging deep learning. J. Marketing Res. 56(6):918–943.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Luca M, Zervas G (2016) Fake it till you make it: Reputation, competition, and Yelp review fraud. Management Sci. 62(12):3412–3427.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Luo J, Luo J, Nan G, Li D (2023) Fake review detection system for online e-commerce platforms: A supervised general mixed probability approach. Decision Support Systems. 175:114045.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mann S, Vrij A, Bull R (2004) Detecting true lies: Police officers’ ability to detect suspects’ lies. J. Appl. Psych. 89(1):137–149.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Mayzlin D, Dover Y, Chevalier J (2014) Promotional reviews: An empirical investigation of online review manipulation. Amer. Econom. Rev. 104(8):2421–2455.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • McCornack SA, Parks MR (1986) Deception detection and relationship development: The other side of trust. Ann. Internat. Comm. Assoc. 9(1):377–389.Google Scholar
  • Mukherjee A, Venkataraman V, Liu B, Glance N (2013) Fake review detection: Classification and analysis of real and pseudo reviews. Working paper, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago.Google Scholar
  • Ng KC, Ke PF, So MK, Tam KY (2023) Augmenting fake content detection in online platforms: A domain adaptive transfer learning via adversarial training approach. Production Oper. Management 32(7):2101–2122.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Plotkina D, Munzel A, Pallud J (2020) Illusions of truth—Experimental insights into human and algorithmic detections of fake online reviews. J. Bus. Res. 109:511–523.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Qiu L, Pang J, Lim KH (2012) Effects of conflicting aggregated rating on eWOM review credibility and diagnosticity: The moderating role of review valence. Decision Support Systems 54(1):631–643.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Reinhard M-A, Greifeneder R, Scharmach M (2013) Unconscious processes improve lie detection. J. Personality Soc. Psych. 105(5):721–739.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Schoolov K (2020) Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it’s getting harder to spot them. CNBC (September 6), https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazon-reviews-thousands-are-fake-heres-how-to-spot-them.html.Google Scholar
  • Serota KB, Levine TR, Boster FJ (2010) The prevalence of lying in America: Three studies of self-reported lies. Human Comm. Res. 36(1):2–25.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Shan G, Zhou L, Zhang D (2021) From conflicts and confusion to doubts: Examining review inconsistency for fake review detection. Decision Support Systems 144:113513.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Simon HA (1956) Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psych. Rev. 63(2):129–138.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sloman SA (1996) The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psych. Bull. 119(1):3–22.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Song Y, Wang L, Zhang Z, Hikkerova L (2023) Do fake reviews promote consumers’ purchase intention? J. Bus. Res. 164:113971.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Spencer SJ, Zanna MP, Fong GT (2005) Establishing a causal chain: Why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. J. Personality Soc. Psych. 89(6):845–851.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sporer SL, Schwandt B (2006) Paraverbal indicators of deception: A meta-analytic synthesis. Appl. Cognitive Psych. 20(4):421–446.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Sporer SL, Schwandt B (2007) Moderators of nonverbal indicators of deception: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psych. Public Policy Law 13(1):1–34.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wang SA, Pang M-S, Pavlou PA (2022) Seeing is believing? How including a video in fake news influences users’ reporting of fake news to social media platforms. MIS Quart. 46(3):1323–1354.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wu Y, Ngai EWT, Wu P, Wu C (2020) Fake online reviews: Literature review, synthesis, and directions for future research. Decision Support Systems 132:113280.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Wyer RS Jr (2018) The role of knowledge accessibility in cognition and behavior: Implications for consumer information processing. Haugtvedt CP, Herr PM, Kardes FR, eds. Handbook of Consumer Psychology (Routledge, New York), 31–76.Google Scholar
  • Yin D, Bond SD, Zhang H (2021) Anger in consumer reviews: Unhelpful but persuasive? MIS Quart. 45(3):1059–1086.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Yin D, Mitra S, Zhang H (2016) When do consumers value positive vs. negative reviews? An empirical investigation of confirmation bias in online word of mouth. Inform. Systems Res. 27(1):131–144.LinkGoogle Scholar
  • Zhang D, Zhou L, Kehoe JL, Kilic IY (2016) What online reviewer behaviors really matter? Effects of verbal and nonverbal behaviors on detection of fake online reviews. J. Management Inform. Systems 33(2):456–481.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Zuckerman M, DePaulo BM, Rosenthal R (1981) Verbal and nonverbal communication of deception. Adv. Experiment. Soc. Psych. 14:1–59.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
  • Zuckerman M, Koestner R, Colella MJ, Alton AO (1984) Anchoring in the detection of deception and leakage. J. Personality Soc. Psych. 47(2):301–311.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
INFORMS site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; Others help us improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Please read our Privacy Statement to learn more.