[paulgb]

That's a good alternative hypothesis. It could also be that people's experience with a product really is bimodal: if I order an alarm clock that works as advertised, it is easy to get 5 stars, if it doesn't work at all, it's 1 star. Your explanation works better for why the distribution persists in books and movies though.

In any case, I find the mechanism design angle interesting regardless of the behavioral angle :)

[gknoy]

I've often hypothesized that most people are more likely to leave a negative review when they are upset, than a positive review when they like something. It certainly holds in my case: I nearly never review things, because it's a giant hassle, so I have to feel really strongly to be willing to spend the time on a review.

[CM30]

You're right. It's been proven a bunch of times that people are more likely to leave negative reviews than positive ones, or to remember bad experiences more overall.

Zendesk actually did a survey on this back in 2013:

http://cdn.zendesk.com/resources/whitepapers/Zendesk_WP_Cust...

And American Express found something similar in their Global Customer Service Barometer survey as well:

http://about.americanexpress.com/news/docs/2014x/2014-Global...

[stordoff]

It makes sense - a product doing what it says it will doesn't stand out / incentivise a review, whereas a bad product makes you want to caution others / get some sense of justice on the company (not sure of a better way to word that).