“What behavioral psychology reveals about your online photos: Comments and approval from other users end up being more important than the way you look.”
It's the same phenomenon both times -- social proof. It's the same reason you're more attractive in a club if you appear to be getting approval from other attractive people. The same reason the original PageRank algorithm did a good job of surfacing web pages people wanted to see.
Here's a related one from yesterday:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/study-soci...
“What behavioral psychology reveals about your online photos: Comments and approval from other users end up being more important than the way you look.”
It's the same phenomenon both times -- social proof. It's the same reason you're more attractive in a club if you appear to be getting approval from other attractive people. The same reason the original PageRank algorithm did a good job of surfacing web pages people wanted to see.