One of the questions that often troubles reviewers is why people get so wound up about what they write. At long last it seems that science is investigating. A paper in the Journal of Consumer Research looks at the general field of product reviews. The authors conclude that the questions, “Will others like it?” and “If others like it, do I?” involve very different psychological processes, and how people respond to them is heavily bound up with each person’s personal need to feel unique, or not.

I suspect that there’s a lot more work to be done here. The current study doesn’t address the question as to why even a mildly unenthusiastic review can induce blind fury in a fan of the work being reviewed. However, the whole question of how you think others will view the work under consideration, and whether that matters, is probably key to understanding reviewer psychology.