Cognitive Biases in Online Opinion Platforms: A Review and Mapping

Abstract

Raising users’ awareness about cognitive biases in online platforms can result in better decisions. However, despite scholarly efforts to examine cognitive biases, there is still a lack of research that systematically analyzes, summarizes, and categorizes the current state of online cognitive biases. To this end, we conducted this systematic review by synthesizing the extant literature to reveal the current state of research on the prevalence and influence of online cognitive biases in the IS discipline. We described the mechanisms of the common cognitive biases, showed how they are studied, and mapped such biases in a six-level information processing model. Our findings from the mapping process revealed that the identified cognitive biases mapped in each of the six-level information processing models were not evenly distributed. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the differences among such biases in a theoretically convergent way. We suggest that future research can be conducted in a broader range of online platforms covering more cognitive bias types.