The highest isn’t always the best

Last year I shared some data that showed that a rating on Amazon of between 4.2-4.5 stars was generally considered more trustworthy than a product with full five-star reviews. Some bad reviews mixed in (ideally with reasonable responses from the owner) tend to make users trust the great reviews even more.

It reminded me today of a funny part of the show “The Good Place“, where Jason Mendoza shares his scale for rating dancers on a scale of 1-13, with 8 being the highest. Check it out here:

If you’ve watched the show, you know that taking any advice from Jason is likely a bad idea, but I thought this was a fun way to look at reviews.

Not unlike Jason’s idea, Amazon and Google reviews go on a scale from 1-5 with 4.5 being the highest. It’s weird, but generally holds true.