researchers from hebrew university, nyu, and mit explored herd mentality in online spaces, specifically in the context of "digitized, aggregated opinions". online comments were given an initial positive or negative vote (up or down) on an undisclosed website over five months. the control group comments were left alone. the researchers found that "the first person reading the comment was 32 percent more likely to give it an up vote if it had been already given a fake positive score". over the five months, comments artificially rated positively showed a 25% higher average score than the control group, with the initial negative vote ending up with no statistical significance in comparison to the control group. the researchers found that "prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behavior, and positive and negative social influences created asymmetric herding effects".