2018/12/16 by Homanga Bharadhwaj, Bharadhwaj, Homanga, Nisheeth Srivastava +1
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Information Retrieval and Search Behavior #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Mobile Crowdsensing and Crowdsourcing #Personal Information Management and User Behavior #Social Media and Politics #cs.CY #cs.HC
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1812.06525
Under review
arxiv created 2018/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2018/12/16 · arxiv updated 2018/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Through a combination of experimental and simulation results, we illustrate that passive recommendations encoded in typical computer user-interfaces (UIs) can subdue users' natural proclivity to access diverse information sources. Inspired by traditional demonstrations of a part-set cueing effect in the cognitive science literature, we performed an online experiment manipulating the operation of the 'New Tab' page for consenting volunteers over a two month period. Examination of their browsing behavior reveals that typical frequency and recency-based methods for displaying websites in these displays subdues users' propensity to access infrequently visited pages compared to a situation wherein no web page icons are displayed on the new tab page. Using a carefully designed simulation study, representing user behavior as a random walk on a graph, we inferred quantitative predictions about the extent to which discovery of new sources of information may be hampered by personalized 'New Tab' recommendations in typical computer UIs. We show that our results are significant at the individual level and explain the potential consequences of the observed suppression in web-exploration.